
Class 
Book 

Gopjiiglit }•;?.. 



COF^lRIGKT DEPOSIT. 



ENGLISH AND ENGINEERING 



BY THE EDITOR OF THIS VOLUME 

Elizabethan Rogues and Vagabonds, and 
their Representation in Contemporary 
Literature. 

College English: a Manual for the Study of 
English Literature and Composition. 

Materials for the Study of English Liter- 
ature AND Composition: Selections from 
Newman, Arnold, Huxley, Ruskin and 

Carlyle. 



ENGLISH AND 
ENGINEEKING 



A VOLUME OF ESSAYS FOR ENGLISH 

CLASSES IN ENGINEERING 

SCHOOLS 



EDITED BY 
FRANK AYDELOTTE 



PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN THE MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGT 



McGRAW-HILL BOOK COMPANY, Inc. 
239 WEST 39TH STREET. NEW YORK 



LONDON: HILL PUBLISHING CO., Ltd. 

6 & 8 BOUVERIE ST., B.C. 

1917 



I"' 






Copyright 1917, by the 
McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. 



JAN 23 1917 



iCl,A455250 
^10 •/ . 



/< 



STi 



PREFACE 

Although I must take the responsibihty for the idea 
and plan of this collection, my obligations to different 
men for help and suggestions are numerous. Among 
practical engineers, teachers of engineering subjects, 
and teachers of English in engineering schools alike I 
have found the most intense interest in the subject of 
English for technical students, for the double end of 
helping them to express themselves better in writing 
and speaking and of broadening their outlook on life 
— two aims which, in my opinion, can best be realized 
together. I have not hesitated to adopt ideas wherever 
I could find them and it is impossible for me in many 
cases to give credit where it is due. I must, however, 
take this opportunity to acknowledge my obligations to 
Professors Comfort A. Adams, Dugald C. Jackson and 
A. E. Norton of the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 
nology, Mr. Farley Osgood and Mr. William Vander- 
pool of the Public Service Corporation of New Jersey, 
and, in still greater degree, to Dr. C. R. Mann of the 
Carnegie Foundation and to Professor H. G. Pearson 
of the English Department of the Massachusetts In- 
stitute of Technology, whose advice and help on a 
hundred points have been of the greatest value. To 
Mr. L. A. Crosby and Mr. Philip Marks of the Eng- 
lish Department of the lyl.assachusetts Institute of 
Technology my thanks are due for assistance with 



vi PREFACE 

proofs. My obligations to various individuals and 
publishing houses for allowing me the use of copy- 
righted material are acknowledged in footnotes to the 
text. F. A. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction v 

Writing and Thinking 

I. Writing and Thinking. By John 

Ruskin i 

II. The Question of Style. By Arnold 

Bennett 4 

III. On English Prose. By Frederic 

Harrison 15 

IV. The Principle of Sincerity. By 

George Henry Lewes 28 

V. The Value of English to the Tech- 
nical Man. By John Lyle Harring- 
ton 45 

VI. The Standard of Usage. By Thomas 

R. Lounsbury 62 

The Engineering Profession 

VII, The New Epoch. By George S. 

Morison .■ 77 

VIII. The Profession of Engineering. By 

George S. Morison 85 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 

Aims of Engineering Education 

PAGE 

IX. Engineering Education. By George 

S. Morison 92 

X. Two Kinds of Education for En- 
gineers. By John Butler Johnson . 107 
XL Disinterestedness. By Francis A. 

Walker 125 

XII. The Professional Demand. By C. 

R. Mann 131 

Pure Science and Applied 

XIII. On the Advisableness of Improving 

Natural Knowledge. By Thomas 
Henry Huxley 140 

XIV. Science and the Applications of 

Science. By John Tyndall . . . 161 

Science and Literature 

XV. Literature. By John Henry New- 
man 176 

XVI. Science and Culture. By Thomas 

Henry Huxley 197 

XVII. Literature and Science. By Mat- 
thew Arnold 218 

XVIII. Poetry and Science. By William 

Wordsworth 243 

XIX. The Liberal Education of the Nine- 
teenth Century. By William P. 
Atkinson 251 



CONTENTS ix 

Literature and Life 

PAGE 

XX. Books Which Have Influenced Me. 

By Robert Louis Stevenson . . . 274 
XXL PuLvis et Umbra. By Robert Louis 

Stevenson 283 

XXIL Self-Reliance. By Ralph Waldo 

Emerson 292 

XXIIL Plugson of Undershot. By Thomas 

Carlyle 308 

XXIV. Captains of Industry. By Thomas 

Carlyle 319 

XXV. Permanence. By Thomas Carlyle . 328 
XXVI. Traffic. By John Ruskin . . .335 
XXVII. The Mystery of Life and Its Arts. 

By John Ruskin 358 



INTRODUCTION 

The problem of teaching the engineering student to 
express himself well in writing and speaking is more 
than the problem of instructing him, by means of books 
or lectures or corrections on themes, in words and the 
uses of words. There is no profitable treatment of 
words that is not also a treatment of ideas. Training 
in expression must be also training in thought or the re- 
sult will be insincere, wordy, artificial, self-conscious — 
in a word — bad expression. It is impossible to give a 
student any real power over language until he comes to 
regard language as a means for the expression of 
thought, and to realize that the thought is the im- 
portant thing. No student (nor any other person) 
ought to write unless he has something to say and a 
strong desire to say it. Given these two things, it is 
easy to make him see when he has said it well and 
when badly, and to help him improve his power of 
expression. 

For reasons which are given at length below, the 
ideas with which the engineering student and his Eng- 
lish teacher can most profitably deal are those embodied 
not in his technical engineering subjects but in litera- 
ture, once the connection (and this is important) be- 
tween engineering and literature is made clear. That 
such a connection exists is apparently evident to the 
practical engineers who are in these days expressing 
themselves emphatically upon this point in the many 



xii INTRODUCTION 

addresses printed by them every year on engineering 
education. It will not be evident to the student until 
he has thought it out, but, once he has, he will bring 
to the study of English the same keenness and en- 
thusiasm which he has for his technical subjects, and 
will master it with the same facility. 

This book is accordingly built upon the theory that 
the function of English in technical education is two- 
fold : in the first place to train students to express 
themselves in writing and speaking, not merely gram- 
matically but with order, force, sincerity, and such 
charm as their natures will allow ; in the second, to fur- 
nish something of the liberal, humanizing, and broad- 
ening element which is more and more felt to be a ne- 
cessary part of an engineering education. The two 
aims are in reality closely connected. A man will write 
crudely if his thinking is crude : there is no way in 
which an engineer can produce, in writing or speaking, 
the effect of an educated man unless he is educated; 
and, if one may take the word of the leaders in the pro- 
fession, that part of his training which tends to human- 
ize him, to develop him as a man, makes him to just 
that degree a better engineer. 

The engineer must deal with men as well as with 
machines. He must be able to think and to express 
himself in terms that other men will understand. He 
must be able to marshal and to arrange his thoughts 
about intricate and difficult matters so as to make them 
plain and clear and forcible. Eloquence in the old 
bombastic sense of the term is not demanded of him, 
but it is demanded that he have clearness and force and 
the ability to present a long and complicated series of 
arguments, to weigh evidence on this side and that, and 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

to come to a conclusion which will carry conviction. 

The engineer is destined to become an important 
figure, a leader, in the new age which is just now 
dawning. He cannot occupy a position of such im- 
portance without his heavy share of duties and re- 
sponsibilities. He cannot be a leader without taking 
upon himself the task of solving many of the gravest 
problems of our civilization, human problems as well 
as mechanical, problems in finance, in government, in 
education, and in social life. The engineer must di- 
rect the labors of thousands of uneducated men, and he 
cannot escape some responsibility for their well-being. 
The work of his hands and brain may build up or de- 
stroy the welfare of whole industrial communities and 
of gigantic corporations. As an employer of younger 
engineers he must take an active part in their educa- 
tion, that great part of education which comes when 
school days are over, and he may, if he have the wis- 
dom, exercise a human influence more important than 
he can ever estimate. With such a role to play in the 
development of our civilization the engineer must think 
in terms of civilization, in human terms as well as ma- 
terial, or be a traitor to his opportunities. 

The thought of the race, the material of our civiliza- 
tion as it exists today, falls into two great divisions, 
literature (or, more broadly speaking, art) and science. 
Philosophy, which may be taken to constitute a third, 
is really a commentary upon both : either literature or 
science pursued far enough becomes philosophy. That 
education which is exclusively literary or exclusively 
scientific is one-sided and narrow. The one thing 
which gives breadth is the understanding of the rela- 
tions between the two, the ability to see life from 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

both angles. To lay a foundation for the understand- 
ing of the relation of literature and science is one of 
the first requisites of that training which aims to edu- 
cate engineers that they may be " not only expert in 
science but reverent toward life." 

Here is the function of literature, and in this idea lies 
the unity of the two aims of English work. To train 
the student to write by first training him to think: to 
stimulate his thought by directing his attenion to prob- 
lems of his own profession and of his own education 
and to the illumination of them which he can find in 
literature : these two tasks may be performed together 
— better together than separately — and with that 
double aim in view this collection has been made. 

The outline and arrangement of the book are dic- 
tated by the aims which have just been explained. 
The first section is an attempt to make the student see 
the dependence of writing on thinking, to impress upon 
him the first of all principles of good writing, that he 
must have something to say. The sad results of try- 
ing to teach students to write on the other principle, 
putting the stress not upon thought but upon words, 
need no commentary to one who has studied the history 
of the teaching of English in this country. The trend 
of recent opinion is in the other direction and that 
fact is the best of auguries for the effective teaching 
of composition. 

The sections following are intended to direct the 
student in thinking out for himself the relations of his 
scientific studies to that other great body of thought 
contained in literature. The bridge is not ready built : 
the task of building it is left to him under the guidance 



INTRODUCTION xv 

of his teacher. A variety of considerations and points 
of view are presented with the design of stimulating 
his thought, not of doing his thinking for him. 

The second and third sections are devoted to essays 
deahng with the profession of engineering and the 
demands which it makes on the engineering schools. 
The student can never see the relation between en- 
gineering and literature until he has some idea of 
what he means by engineering, until he makes up his 
mind for himself whether he is learning a trade or a 
profession, and until he forms for himself some con- 
ception of the opportunity of the engineer for human 
leadership in this new epoch which is being ushered in 
by the manufacture of power. Once he has thought 
about that subject he is ready to think more clearly 
and more broadly about the aims of engineering edu- 
cation. It is impossible to educate a man without his 
consent. It is impossible to educate him broadly if 
what he wants is only the narrow rules-of-thumb which 
might fit him to follow a trade but which are inade- 
quate to the demands of a liberal and intellectual pro- 
fession. Hence the importance of having a student 
read thoughtfully at the very outset of his career what 
the leaders of the profession have said about the true 
aims of engineering education. 

These topics lead directly to the question of the rela- 
tion between pure science and applied, and that prob- 
lem leads straight to the central one of the relation of 
science to literature and of the part which each plays 
in education — not merely in the education which fits 
a man for the practice of his profession but also in that 
solution of the great mysteries of life which each man 
must seek for himself. The student who has followed 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

the train of thought so far should have a new point of 
view toward Hterature, a point of view which will en- 
able him to see in it not something alien to all his work 
and interests, nor merely an elegant amusement for his 
idle hours, but rather a body of thought bearing in a 
thousand ways upon his scientific studies and his rela- 
tions with other men. 

The final section, " Literature and Life," offers 
definite illustrations of literature as a comment on life. 
The essays which could be included are only a few 
from a very large field and their purpose is merely sug- 
gestive, to teach the student to read thoughtfully and 
to apply what he reads to his own personal life. This 
section of the book may be taken as a kind of introduc- 
tion to further and more extended study of literature 
or to the student's own reading. 

This volume is planned for reading in connection 
with constant discussion and writing. The dififerent 
essays should be considered as supplying questions and 
topics for thought. Following the preliminary discus- 
sion in class of what any single essay is trying to say, 
comes the question. What do you think about it ? At first 
the undergraduate will probably have few ideas. But 
the skillful teacher will find that if he follows ques- 
tion with question, on this side and that, points of view 
will soon begin to develop in the class-room. If he pre- 
serves an atmosphere in which thought is free and if he 
encourages each tentative opinion, differences will ap- 
pear and trains of thought will be started which will 
demand careful statement in writing to do them justice. 
Here it is that the instructor will find material for oral 
and written composition, in which the student's read- 
ing will furnish stimulus and suggestion but not the 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

rule or limit for his thought. Themes should never be 
mere analyses or summaries but rather the expression 
of individual points of view or the expansion and illus- 
tration of single points in the essay under discussion, 
with direct reference to the life of the student and the 
problems of his own education. 

Once interest is aroused in this way, correctness in 
writing is comparatively easy to achieve. For one 
thing the student who is interested in what he has to 
say, who feels that he is exploring new ground, will 
write more carefully than he does when he is merely 
trying to produce a " theme." And when he is eager 
to say as well as possible what he thinks, he will re- 
member any suggestions that are made as to form. 
For the teaching of matters of form there is no 
economy equal to having a student interested in the 
ideas he is trying to express. The whole matter be- 
tween form and content is one of emphasis. The wise 
teacher will never lose an opportunity to help his stu- 
dents in the attainment of correctness in language, and 
at the same time he will never fail to make clear to 
them that the sole justification of care in language is the 
adequate expression of thought so that it will be easily 
and pleasantly understandable to the audience they 
wish to reach. 

The objection may be made to this entire program 
that thinking is one of those things which cannot be 
taught. The teacher of English composition, such an 
objector would say, must take his students as they are, 
teach them to express in language such thoughts as 
they have, and be content with that. He cannot hope 
to teach them to think beyond their natural capacities 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

and above the innate ideas and prejudices of their class 
and position, which they have when they come to him. 
It must be admitted that there is a color of truth in 
this objection. There is no magic formula, no pro- 
gram of the development of separate " faculties " 
which can be combined to produce the power of 
thought. But while thinking cannot in this sense be 
taught, it can be stimulated; the student's tentative 
attempts can be questioned and criticized in such a man- 
ner as to develop his mental power or to enable him 
to develop it for himself. The first of all requisites 
for this is that the teacher should himself be thinking 
with the class. Their minds will catch the flame from 
his. Then the questions which he is discussing with 
them must be such as to call forth the best efforts of 
his mind and theirs. Pre-digested mental food will not 
strengthen the mental power of assimilation any more 
than pre-digested physical food will the bodily. And, 
finally, the teacher must drop the role of master and 
assume that of the seeker after truth. His method 
must be that of Socrates, that of the " intellectual mid- 
wife," presiding over the birth of ideas. The triumph 
of his art will be " in thoroughly examining whether 
the thought which the mind of the young man brings 
forth is a false idol or a noble and true birth." Like 
Socrates he must arouse in his patients the pains and 
perplexity and travail of thought. Like Socrates he 
must be resolute in exposing the false opinion when 
it has been brought forth. Like Socrates, however, he 
must do this by appealing not to authority, either his 
own or another's or a book's, but by the appeal to rea- 
son, by the gentle art of refutation. By such methods 
will the teacher be able to awaken his pupils and to 



INTRODUCTION xix 

stimulate them to think ; by such methods will he suc- 
ceed in purging their thought of the prejudices and in- 
tolerances and easy inherited assents which are the 
enemies of the truth. By these methods and by these 
alone can he teach them to write. 

Such is the purpose of this book — to furnish the 
text and starting point for work of the kind just indi- 
cated. The aim of the editor will have been fulfilled 
if it leads the student to see for himself that there is 
imagination in science as well as in literature, reason 
in literature as well as in science, and human truth in 
both ; if it sharpens his intellectual curiosity and teaches 
him to be content with no partial view, but to seek from 
science, from literature and from the practical world 
to build up for himself a conception of life worthy of 
his best thought, one which will impel him to take ad- 
vantage of the broader and nobler and more human op- 
portunities of his profession. 



ENGLISH AND ENGINEERING 

I 

Writing and Thinking 

By John Ruskin ^ 

The chief vices of education have arisen from the 
one great fallacy of supposing that noble language is a 
communicable trick of grammar and accent, instead of 
simply the careful expression of right thought. All 
the virtues of language are, in their roots, moral ; it 
becomes accurate if the speaker desires to be true; 
clear, if he speaks with sympathy and a desire to be 

1 These paragraphs on Writing and Thinking, which are to be taken 
as a kind of motto for this book, are from Ruskin's lecture on " The 
Relation of Art to Morals," which forms Chapter III of his Lec- 
tures on Art, 1870. 

John Ruskin, 1819-1900, was an art critic and writer on social 
and economic questions: among his best known works are Modern 
Painters, 1843-60, Unto This Last, i860. Sesame and Lilies, 1865, and 
Crown of Wild Olive, 1866. Ruskin has perhaps been most influ- 
ential in his attempt to show the connection between the art of a 
people and the social, economic, and religious conditions of their 
lives. This selection on the art of writing is typical of his point of 
view toward all the arts. 

Following to some extent the lead of Carlyle, Ruskin attacked the 
problems of nineteenth-century industrialism in a way which has had 
an important influence on the political economy of today. An illus- 
tration is the essay, " Traffic," printed in this volume; this aspect 
of his work is ably discussed by J. A. Hobson in his book, John Ruskin, 
Social Reformer. " The Mystery of Life and Its Arts," which forms 
the last selection in this collection, is an attempt to .show the inevi- 
table connection of art and literature with the fundamental problems 
of life. — Editor. 

I 



2 JOHN RUSKIN 

intelligible; powerful, if he has earnestness; pleasant, 
if he has sense of rhythm and order. There are no 
other virtues of language producible by art than 
these : but let me mark more deeply for an instant the 
significance of one of them. Language, I said, is 
only clear when it is sympathetic. You can, in truth, 
understand a man's word only by understanding his 
temper. Your own word is also as of an unknown 
tongue to him unless he understands yours. And it 
is this which makes the art of language, if any one is 
to be chosen separately from the rest, that which is 
fittest for the instrument of a gentleman's education. 
To teach the meaning of a word thoroughly, is to 
teach the nature of the spirit that coined it; the secret 
of language is the secret of sympathy, and its full 
charm is possible only to the gentle. And thus the 
principles of beautiful speech have all been fixed by 
sincere and kindly speech. On the laws which have 
been determined by sincerity, false speech, apparently 
beautiful, may afterwards be constructed; but all 
such utterance, whether in oration or poetry, is not 
only without permanent power, but it is destructive 
of the principles it has usurped. So long as no words 
are uttered but in faithfulness, so long the art of 
language goes on exalting itself; but the moment it 
is shaped and chiselled on external principles, it falls 
into frivolity, and perishes. And this truth would 
have been long ago manifest, had it not been that in 
periods of advanced academical science there is always 
a tendency to deny the sincerity of the first masters 
of language. Once learn to write gracefully in the 
manner of an ancient author, and we are apt to 
think that he also wrote in the manner of some 



WRITING AND THINKING 3 

one else. But no noble nor right style was ever 
yet founded but out of a sincere heart. 

No man is worth reading to form your style, who 
does not mean what he says ; nor was any great style 
ever invented but by some man who meant what he 
said. Find out the beginner of a great manner of 
writing, and you have also found the declarer of 
some true facts or sincere passions : and your whole 
method of reading will thus be quickened, for, being 
sure that your author really meant what he said, you 
will be much more careful to ascertain what it is that 
he means. 

And of yet greater importance is it deeply to know 
that every beauty possessed by the language of a na- 
tion is significant of the innermost laws of its be- 
ing. Keep the temper of the people stern and manly ; 
make their associations grave, courteous, and for 
worthy objects ; occupy them in just deeds ; and their 
tongue must needs be a grand one. Nor is it possi- 
ble, therefore — observe the necessary reflected ac- 
tion — that any tongue should be a noble one, of 
which the words are not so many trumpet-calls to 
action. All great languages invariably utter great 
things, and command them ; they cannot be mimicked 
but by obedience ; the breath of them is inspiration 
because it is not only vocal, but vital ; and you can 
only learn to speak as these men spoke, by becoming 
what these men were. 



II 

The Question of Style 

By Arnold Bennett ^ 

In discussing the value of particular books, I have 
heard people say — people who were timid about ex- 
pressing their views of literature in the presence of 
literary men : "It may be bad from a literary point 
of view, but there are very good things in it." Or: 
" I dare say the style is very bad, but really the book 
is very interesting and suggestive." Or : " I'm not 
an expert, and so I never bother my head about good 
style. All I ask for is good matter. And when I 
have got it, critics may say what they like about the 
book." And many other similar remarks, all show- 
ing that in the minds of the speakers there existed a 
notion that style is something supplementary to, and 
distinguishable from, matter; a sort of notion that a 
writer who wanted to be classical had first to find 
and arrange his matter, and then dress it up ele- 

1 This essay is the sixth chapter of Mr. Arnold Bennett's excellent 
little book, Literary Taste and How to Form It, first published in 1909. 
It is reprinted here by kind permission of the George H. Doran Com- 
pany, publishers. 

Enoch Arnold Bennett was born in 1867 and is today one of the 
leading English writers of novels, plays, and popular treatises, desig- 
nated by him " Popular Philosophies." Among his best known works 
are the trilogy, Clayhanger, Hilda Lessways, and These Twain, the 
Old Wives' Tale, Buried Alive, Milestones, and How to Live on 24 
Hours a Day. — Editor. 



THE QUESTION OF STYLE . 5 

gantly in a costume of style, in order to please beings 
called literary critics. 

This is a misapprehension. Style cannot be dis- 
tinguished from matter. When a writer conceives an 
idea he conceives it in a form of words. That form 
of words constitutes his style, and it is absolutely 
governed by the idea. The idea can only exist in 
words, and it can only exist in one form of words. 
You cannot say exactly the same thing in two dif- 
ferent ways. Slightly alter the expression, and you 
slightly alter the idea. Surely it is obvious that the 
expression cannot be altered without altering the thing 
expressed ! A writer, having conceived and expressed 
an idea, may, and probably will, " polish it up." But 
what does he polish up? To say that he polishes up 
his style is merely to say that he is polishing up his 
idea, that he has discovered faults or imperfections 
in his idea, and is perfecting it. An idea exists in 
proportion as it is expressed ; it exists when it is 
expressed, and not before. It expresses itself. A 
clear idea is expressed clearly, and a vague idea 
vaguely. You need but take your own case and your 
own speech. For just as science is the development 
of common-sense, so is literature the development of 
common daily speech. The difference between science 
and common-sense is simply one of degree ; similarly 
with speech and literature. Well, when you " know 
what you think," you succeed in saying what you 
think, in making yourself understood. When you 
" don't know what to think," your expressive tongue 
halts. And note how in daily life the characteristics 
of your style follow your mood ; how tender it is when 
you are tender, how violent when you are violent. 



6 . ARNOLD BENNETT 

You have said to yourself in moments of emotion : 
"If only I could write — ," etc. You were wrong. 
You ought to have said : " If only I could think — 
on this high plane." When you have thought clearly 
you have never had any difficulty in saying what you 
thought, though you may occasionally have had some 
difficulty in keeping it to yourself. And when you can- 
not express yourself, depend upon it that you have 
nothing precise to express, and that what incommodes 
you is not the vain desire to express, but the vain de- 
sire to think more clearly. All this just to illustrate 
how style and matter are co-existent, and inseparable, 
and alike. 

You cannot have good matter with bad style. Ex- 
amine the point more closely. A man wishes to con- 
vey a fine idea to you. He employs a form of words. 
That form of words is his style. Having read, you 
say : " Yes, this idea is fine." The writer has there- 
fore achieved his end. But in what imaginable cir- 
cumstances can you say : " Yes, this idea is fine, but 
the style is not fine " ? The sole medium of communi- 
cation between you and the author has been the form 
of words. The fine idea has reached you. How ? In 
the words, by the words. Hence the fineness must be 
in the words. You may say, superiorly : " He has 
expressed himself clumsily, but I can see what he 
means." By what light? By something in the words, 
in the style. That something is fine. Moreover, if 
the style is clumsy, are you sure that you can see what 
he means? You cannot be quite sure. And, at any 
rate, you cannot see distinctly. The " matter " is 



THE QUESTION OF STYLE 7 

what actually reaches you, and it must necessarily be 
affected by the style. 

Still further to comprehend what style is, let me 
ask you to think of a writer's style exactly as you 
would think of the gestures and manners of an ac- 
quaintance. You know the man whose demeanor is 
" always calm," but whose passions are strong. How 
do you know that his passions are strong? Because 
he " gives them away " by some small, but important, 
part of his demeanor, such as the twitching of a lip 
or the whitening of the knuckles caused by clenching 
the hand. In other words, his demeanor, funda- 
mentally, is not calm. You know the man who is al- 
ways " smoothly polite and agreeable," but who af- 
fects you unpleasantly. Why does he affect you un- 
pleasantly? Because he is tedious, and therefore dis- 
agreeable, and because his politeness is not real 
politeness. You know the man who is awkward, shy, 
clumsy, but who, nevertheless, impresses you with a 
sense of dignity and force. Why? Because mingled 
with that awkwardness and so forth is dignity. You 
know the blunt, rough fellow whom you instinctively 
guess to be affectionate — because there is " something 
in his tone " or " something in his eyes." In every in- 
stance the demeanor, while perhaps seeming to be 
contrary to the character, is really in accord with it. 
The demeanor never contradicts the character. It 
is one part of the character that contradicts another 
part of the character. For, after all, the blunt man 
is blunt, and the awkward man is awkward, and these 
characteristics are defects. The demeanor merely 



8 ARNOLD BENNETT 

expresses them. The two men would be better if, 
while conserving their good qualities, they had the 
superficial attributes of smoothness and agreeableness 
possessed by the gentleman who is unpleasant to you. 
And as regards this latter, it is not his superficial at- 
tributes which are unpleasant to you, but his other 
qualities. In the end the character is shown in the 
demeanor; and the demeanor is a consequence of 
the character and resembles the character. So with 
style and matter. You may argue that the blunt, 
rough man's demeanor is unfair to his tenderness. I 
do not think so. For his churlishness is really very 
trying and painful, even to the man's wife, though a 
moment's tenderness will make her and you forget it. 
The man really is churlish, and much more often than 
he is tender. His demeanor is merely just to his 
character. So, when a writer annoys you for ten pages 
and then enchants you for ten lines, you must not ex- 
plode against his style. You must not say that his 
style won't let his matter " come out." You must re- 
member the churlish, tender man. The more you re- 
flect, the more clearly you will see that faults and ex- 
cellences of style are faults and excellences of matter 
itself. 

One of the most striking illustrations of this neg- 
lected truth is Thomas Carlyle. How often has it 
been said that Carlyle's matter is marred by the harsh- 
ness and the eccentricities of his style? But Carlyle's 
matter is harsh and eccentric to precisely the same de- 
gree as his style is harsh and eccentric. Carlyle was 
harsh and eccentric. His behavior was frequently 
ridiculous, if it were not abominable. His judgments 



THE QUESTION OF STYLE 9 

were often extremely bizarre. When you read one of 
Carlyle's fierce diatribes, you say to yourself : " This 
is splendid. The man's enthusiasm for justice and 
truth is glorious," But you also say : " He is a 
little unjust and a little untruthful. He goes too far. 
He lashes too hard." These things are not the style; 
they are the matter. And when, as in his greatest 
moments, he is emotional and restrained at once, you 
say : " This is the real Carlyle." Kindly notice how 
perfect the style has become ! No harshnesses or ec- 
centricities now ! And if that particular matter is the 
" real " Carlyle, then that particular style is Carlyle's 
" real " style. But when you say " real " you would 
more properly say " best." " This is the best Carlyle." 
If Carlyle had always been at his best he would have 
counted among the supreme geniuses of the world. 
But he was a mixture. His style is the expression of 
the mixture. The faults are only in the style because 
they are in the matter. 

You will find that, in classical literature, the style 
always follows the mood of the matter. Thus, Charles 
Lamb's essay on " Dream Children " begins quite sim- 
ply, in a calm, narrative manner, enlivened by a certain 
quippishness concerning the children. The style is 
grave when great-grandmother Field is the subject, 
and when the author passes to a rather elaborate im- 
pression of the picturesque old mansion it becomes 
as it were consciously beautiful. This beauty is intensi- 
fied in the description of the still more beautiful garden. 
But the real dividing point of the essay occurs when 
Lamb approaches his elder brother. He unmistakably 
marks the point with the phrase : " Then, in somewhat 



10 ARNOLD BENNETT 

a more heightened tone, I told how," etc. Hencefor- 
ward the style increases in fervor and in solemnity 
until the culmination of the essay is reached : " And 
while I stood gazing, both the children gradually grew 
fainter to my view, receding and still receding till 
nothing at last but two mournful features were seen 
in the uttermost distance, which without speech, 
strangely impressed upon me the effects of speech. 
. . ." Throughout, the style is governed by the mat- 
ter. " Well," you say, " of course it is. It couldn't 
be otherwise. If it were otherwise it would be 
ridiculous. A man who made love as though he were 
preaching a sermon, or a man who preached a sermon 
as though he were teasing schoolboys, or a man who 
described a death as though he were describing a prac- 
tical joke, must necessarily be either an ass or a luna- 
tic." Just so. You have put it in a nutshell. You 
have disposed of the problem of style so far as it 
can be disposed of. 

But what do those people mean who say : " I read 
such and such an author for the beauty of his style 
alone " ? Personally, I do not clearly know what they 
mean (and I have never been able to get them to ex- 
plain), unless they mean that they read for the beauty 
of sound alone. When you read a book there are only 
three things of which you may be conscious: (i) 
The significance of the words, which is inseparably 
bound up with the thought. (2) The look of the 
printed words on the page — I do not suppose that 
anybody reads any author for the visual beauty of the 
words on the page. (3) The sound of the words, 
either actually uttered or imagined by the brain to be 
uttered. Now it is indubitable that words differ in 



THE QUESTION OF STYLE ii 

beauty of sound. To my mind one of the most beauti- 
ful words in the EngHsh language is " pavement." 
Enunciate it, study its sound, and see what you think. 
It is also indubitable that certain combinations of words 
have a more beautiful sound than certain other com- 
binations. Thus Tennyson held that the most beauti- 
ful line he ever wrote was : 

The mellow ousel fluting in the elm. 

Perhaps, as sound, it was. Assuredly it makes a 
beautiful succession of sounds, and recalls the bird- 
sounds which it is intended to describe. But does it 
live in the memory as one of the rare great Tenny- 
sonian lines? It does not. It has charm, but the 
charm is merely curious or pretty. A whole poem 
composed of lines with no better recommendation than 
that line has would remain merely curious or pretty. 
It would not permanently interest. It would be as 
insipid as a pretty woman who had nothing behind 
her prettiness. It would not live. One may remark 
in this connection how the merely verbal felicities of 
Tennyson have lost our esteem. Who will now pro- 
claim the Idylls of the King as a masterpiece? Of the 
thousands of lines written by him which please the 
ear, only those survive of which the matter is charged 
with emotion. No ! As regards the man who pro- 
fesses to read an author " for his style alone," I am 
inclined to think either that he will soon get sick of 
that author, or that he is deceiving himself and means 
the author's general temperament — not the author's 
verbal style, but a peculiar quality which runs through 
all the matter written by the author. Just as one may 
like a man for something which is always coming out 



12 ARNOLD BENNETT 

of him, which one cannot define, and which is of the 
very essence of the man. 

In judging the style of an author, you must em- 
ploy the same canons as you use in judging men. If 
you do this you will not be tempted to attach im- 
portance to trifles that are negligible. There can be 
no lasting friendship without respect. If an author's 
style is such that you cannot respect it, then you may 
be sure that, despite any present pleasure which you 
may obtain from that author, there is something 
wrong with his matter, and that the pleasure will 
soon cloy. You must examine your sentiments to- 
wards an author. If when you have read an author 
you are pleased, without being conscious of aught but 
his mellifluousness, just conceive what your feelings 
would be after spending a month's holiday with a 
merely mellifluous man. If an author's style has 
pleased you, but done nothing except make you giggle, 
then reflect upon the ultimate tediousness of the man 
who can do nothing but jest. On the other hand, if 
you are impressed by what an author has said to 
you, but are aware of verbal clumsinesses in his work, 
you need worry about his " bad style " exactly as much 
and exactly as little as you would worry about the 
manners of a kind-hearted, keen-brained friend who 
was dangerous to carpets with a tea-cup in his hand. 
The friend's antics in a drawing-room are somewhat 
regrettable, but you would not say of him that his 
manners were bad. Again, if an author's style daz- 
zles you instantly and blinds you to everything except 
its brilliant self, ask your soul, before you begin to 
admire his matter, what would be your final opinion 
of a man who at the first meeting fired his personality 



THE QUESTION OF STYLE 13 

into you like a broad-side. Reflect that, as a rule, the 
people whom you have come to esteem communicated 
themselves to you gradually, that they did not begin 
the entertainment with fireworks. In short, look at 
literature as you would look at life, and you cannot 
fail to perceive that, essentially, the style is the man. 
Decidedly you will never assert that you care noth- 
ing for style, that your enjoyment of an author's mat- 
ter is unaffected by his style. And you wall never 
assert, either, that style alone suffices for you. 

If you are undecided upon a question of style, 
whether leaning to the favorable or to the unfavor- 
able, the most prudent course is to forget that Hterary 
style exists. For, indeed, as style is understood by 
most people who have not analyzed their impressions 
under the influence of literature, there is no such 
thing as literary style. You cannot divide literature 
into tw^o elements and say : This is matter and that 
style. Further, the significance and the v/orth of liter- 
ature are to be comprehended and assessed in the 
same way as the significance and the worth of any 
other phenomenon : by the exercise of common-sense. 
Common-sense will tell you that nobody, not even a 
genius, can be simultaneously vulgar and distinguished, 
or beautiful and ugly, or precise and vague, or tender 
and harsh. And common-sense will therefore tell you 
that to try to set up vital contradictions between mat- 
ter and style is absurd. When there is a superficial 
contradiction, one of the two mutually-contradicting 
qualities is of far less importance than the other. If 
you refer literature to the standards of life, common- 
sense will at once decide which quality should count 



14 ARNOLD BENNETT 

heaviest in your esteem. You will be in no danger 
of weighing a mere maladroitness of manner against 
a fine trait of character, or of letting a graceful de- 
portment blind you to a fundamental vacuity. When 
in doubt, ignore style, and think of the matter as 
you would think of an individual. 



Ill 

On English Prose 

By Frederic Harrison ^ 

Fill mi Dilectissime (if, sir, I may borrow the 
words of the late Lord Derby when, as Chancellor of 
the University, he conferred the degree of D.C.L. on 
Lord Stanley, his son) — I fear that I am about to 
do an unwise thing. When, in an hour of paternal 
weakness, I accepted your invitation to address the 
Bodley Society on Style, it escaped me that it was a 
subject with which undergraduates have but small 
concern. And now I find myself talking on a matter 
whereof I know very little, and could do you no good 
even if I knew much, in presence of an illustrious his- 
torian, to say nothing of your own Head, who was an 
acknowledged master of English when my own literary 
style aspired to nothing more elegant than the dry 
forms of pleadings and deeds. 

1 Mr. Harrison's address " On English Prose " was delivered in 1898 
before the Bodley Literary Society, Oxford, of which his son, C. Rene 
Harrison, was President. It forms Chapter VII of his book, Tenny- 
son, Ruskin, Mill, and Other Literary Estimates, and is reprinted here 
by kind permission of the Macmillan Company, publishers. 

Frederic Harrison, who was born in 183 1, is a well known English 
writer on historical, literary, and philosophical subjects. He was from 
1880 to 1905 President of the English Positivist Committee, and has 
been, since his university days, a prominent exponent of the Positivist 
philosophy. This system, originated by Auguste Comte (1798-1857), 
bases its intellectual, social, and moral beliefs on the methods of natural 
science, and advocates a " Religion of Humanity " in the place of any 
worship of a supernatural being. — Editor. 

IS 



i6 FREDERIC HARRISON 

Every one knows how futile for any actual result 
are those elaborate disquisitions on Style which some 
of the most consummate masters have amused them- 
selves in compiling, but which serve at best to show how 
quite hackneyed truisms can be graced by an almost mi- 
raculous neatness of phrase. It is in vain to enjoin 
on us " propriety," " justness of expression," " suit- 
ability of our language to the subject we treat," and 
all the commonplaces which the schools of Addison 
and of Johnson in the last century promulgated as 
canons of good style. " Proper words in proper 
places," says Swift, " make the true definition of a 
style." " Each phrase in its right place," says Vol- 
taire. Well ! Swift and Voltaire knew how to do 
this with supreme skill ; but it does not help us, if 
they cannot teach their art. How are we to know 
what is the proper word? Hozv are we to find the 
right place? And even a greater than Swift or Vol- 
taire is not much more practical as a teacher. " Suit 
the action to the word, and the word to the action," 
says Hamlet. " Be not too tame neither. Let your 
own discretion be your tutor." Can you trust your 
own discretion? Have undergraduates this discre- 
tion? And how could I, in presence of your College 
authority, suggest that you should have no tutor but 
your own discretion? 

All this is as if a music-master were to say to a 
pupil. Sing always in tune and with the right intona- 
tion, and whatever you do, produce your voice in the 
proper way ! Or, to make myself more intelligible to 
you here, it is as if W. G. Grace were to tell you, Play 
a " yorker " in the right way, and place the ball in the 
proper spot with reference to the field ! We know that 



ENGLISH PROSE 17 

neither the art of acting, nor of singing, nor of cricket 
can "he taught by general commonplaces of this sort. 
And good prose is so far like cricket that the W. G.'s 
of literature, after ten or twenty " centuries," can tell 
you nothing more than this — to place your words 
in the right spot, and to choose the proper word, ac- 
cording to the " field " that you have before you. 

The most famous essay on Style, I suppose, is that 
by one of the greatest wizards who ever used lan- 
guage — I mean the Ars Poetica of Horace, almost 
every line of which has become a household word in 
the educated world. But what avail his inimitable 
epigrams in practice? Who is helped by being told 
not to draw a man's head on a horse's neck, or a beauti- 
ful woman with the tail end of a fish? " Do not let 
brevity become obscurity ; do not let your mountain in 
labor bring forth a mouse ; turn over your Greek 
models night and day ; your compositions must be 
not only correct, but must give delight, touch the 
heart," and so forth, and so forth. All these im- 
perishable maxims, as clean cut as a sardonyx gem — 
these " chestnuts," as you call them in the slang of 
the day — serve as hard nuts for a translator to crack, 
and as handy mottoes at the head of an essay ; but they 
are barren of any solid food as the shell of a walnut. 

Then Voltaire, perhaps the greatest master of prose 
in any modern language, wrote an essay on Style, in 
the same vein of epigrammatic platitude. No decla- 
mation, says he, in a work on physics. No jesting in 
a treatise on mathematics. Well! but did Douglas 
Jerrold himself ever try to compose a Comic Trig- 
onometry; and could another Charles Lamb find any 
fun in Spencer's First Principles? A fine style, says 



i8 FREDERIC HARRISON 

Voltaire, makes anything delightful ; but it is exceed- 
ingly difficult to acquire, and very rarely found. And 
all he has to say is, " Avoid grandiloquence, confusion, 
vulgarity, cheap wit, and colloquial slang in a tragedy." 
He might as well say, Take care to be as strong as 
Sandow, and as active as Prince Ranjitsinhji, and 
whatever you do, take care not to grow a nose like 
Cyrano de Bergerac in the new play ! 

An ingenious professor of literature has lately ven- 
tured to commit himself to an entire treatise on Style, 
wherein he has propounded everything that can use- 
fully be said about this art, in a style which illustrates 
things that you should avoid. At the end of his book 
he declares that style cannot be taught. This is true 
enough ; but if this had been the first, instead of the 
last, sentence of his piece, the book would not have 
been written at all. I remember that, when I stood 
for the Hertford Scholarship, we had to write a Latin 
epigram on the thesis — 

Omnia liberius nulla poscente — 

— fatemur, (I replied — ) 
Carmina cur poscas, carmine si sit opus? 

And so I say now. Style cannot be taught. And 
this perhaps puts out of court the professor's essay, 
and no doubt my own also. Nothing practical can be 
said about Style, And no good can come to a young 
student by being anxious about Style. None of you 
by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature ; 
no ! nor one gem to his English prose, unless nature 
has endowed him with that rare gift — a subtle ear 
for the melody of words, a fastidious instinct for the 
connotations of a phrase. 



ENGLISH PROSE 19 

You will, of course, understand that I am speaking 
of Style in that higher sense as it was used by Horace, 
Swift, Voltaire, and great writers, that is, Style as an 
element of permanent literature. It is no doubt very 
easy by practice and good advice to gain a moderate 
facility in writing current language, and even to get 
the trick of turning out lively articles and smart re- 
views. " 'Tis as easy as lying ; govern these ventages 
with your finger and thumb, give it breath with your 
mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music " — 
quite up to the pitch of the journals and the magazines 
of our day, of which we are all proud. But this is a 
poor trade ; and it would be a pity to waste your 
precious years of young study by learning to play on 
the literary " recorders." You may be taught to fret 
them. You will not learn to make them speak ! 

There are a few negative precepts, quite familiar 
common form, easy to remember, and not difficult to 
observe. These are all that any manual can lay down. 
The trouble comes in when we seek to apply them. 
What is it that is artifical, incongruous, obscure? 
How are we to be simple? Whence comes the music 
of language? What is the magic that can charm into 
life the apt and inevitable word that lies hidden some- 
where at hand — so near and yet so far — so willing 
and yet so coy — did we only know the talisman which 
can awaken it? This is what no teaching can give us 
— what skillful tuition and assiduous practice can but 
improve in part, and even that only for the chosen few. 

About Style, in the higher sense of the term, I 
think the young student should trouble himself as 
little as possible. When he does, it too often becomes 
the art of clothing thin ideas in well-made garments. 



20 FREDERIC HARRISON 

To gain skill in expression before he has got thoughts 
or knowledge to express, is somewhat premature ; and 
to waste in the study of form those irrevocable years 
which should be absorbed in the study of things, is 
mere decadence and fraud. The young student — 
ex hypothesi — has to learn, not to teach. His duty is 
to digest knowledge, not to popularize it and carry it 
abroad. It is a grave mental defect to parade an 
external polish far more mature than the essential 
matter within. Where the learner is called on to ex- 
press his thoughts in formal compositions — and the 
less he does this the better — it is enough that he put 
his ideas or his knowledge (if he has any) in clear 
and natural terms. But the less he labors the flow of 
his periods the more truly is he the honest learner, the 
less is his risk of being the smug purveyor of the 
crudities with which he has been crammed, the further 
is he from becoming one of those voluble charlatans 
whom the idle study of language so often breeds. 

I look with sorrow on the habit which has grown 
up in the university since my day (in the far-off fifties) 
— the habit of making a considerable part of the edu- 
cation of the place to turn on the art of serving up 
gobbets of prepared information in essays more or 
less smooth and correct — more or less successful imi- 
tations of the viands that are cooked for us daily in 
the press. I have heard that a student has been asked 
to write as many as seven essays in a week, a task 
which would exhaust the fertility of a Swift. The 
bare art of writing readable paragraphs in passable 
Enghsh is easy enough to master; one that steady 
practice and good coaching can teach the average man. 
But it is a poor art, which readily lends itself to harm. 



ENGLISH PROSE 21 

It leads the shallow ones to suppose themselves to be 
deep, the raw ones to fancy they are cultured, and it 
burdens the world with a deluge of facile common- 
place. It is the business of a university to train the 
mind to think and to impart solid knowledge, not to 
turn out nimble penmen who may earn a living as the 
clerks and salesmen of literature. 

Almost all that can be laid down as law about Style 
is contained in a sentence of Madame de Sevigne in 
her twentieth letter to her daughter. " Ne quittez 
jamais le naturel," she says ; " votre tour s'y est 
forme, et cela compose un style parfait." I suppose I 
must translate this ; for Madame de Sevigne is no sub- 
ject for modern research, and our Alma Mater is con- 
cerned only with dead languages and remote epochs. 
" Never forsake what is natural," she writes ; " you 
have moulded yourself in that vein, and this produces 
a perfect style." There is nothing more to be said. 
Be natural, be simple, be yourself : shun artifices, tricks, 
fashions. Gain the tone of ease, plainness, self- 
respect. To thine own self be true. Speak out frankly 
that which you have thought out in your own brain and 
have felt within your own soul. This, and this alone, 
creates a perfect style, as she says who wrote the most 
exquisite letters the world has known. 

And so Moliere, a consummate master of language 
and one of the soundest critics of any age, in that im- 
mortal scene of his Misanthrope, declares the euphu- 
istic sonnets of the Court to be mere play of words, 
pure afifectation, not worth a snatch from a peasant's 
song. That is not the way in which nature speaks, 
cries Alceste — J'aime mieux ma mie — that is how 
the heart gives utterance, without colifichets, with no 



22 FREDERIC HARRISON 

quips and cranks of speech, very dear to fancy, and 
of very liberal conceit. And Sainte-Beuve cites an 
admirable saying : " All peasants have style." They 
speak as nature prompts. They have never learned 
to play with words; they have picked up no tricks, 
mannerisms, and affectation like Osric and Oronte in 
the plays. They were not trained to write essays, and 
never got veterans to discourse to them on Style. Yet, 
as Sainte-Beuve says, they have style, because they 
have human nature, and they have never tried to get 
outside the natural, the simple, the homely. It is the 
secret of Wordsworth, as it was of Goldsmith, as it 
was of Homer. 

And now I know I must not end without hazarding 
a few practical hints — what betting men and under- 
graduates call " tips " — for general remarks upon lit- 
erature have little interest for those whose mind runs 
on sports, and perhaps even less for those whose mind 
is absorbed in the schools. But as there are always 
some who dream of a life of " letters," an occupa- 
tion already too crowded and far from inviting at the 
best, they will expect me to tell them how I think they 
may acquire a command of Style. I know no reason 
why they should, and I know no way they could set 
about it. But, supposing one has something to say — 
something that it concerns the world to know — and 
this, for a young student, is a considerable claim, " a 
large order," I think he calls it in the current dialect, 
all I have to tell him is this : Think it out quite clearly 
in your own mind, and then put it down in the simplest 
words that offer, just as if you were telling it to a 



ENGLISH PROSE 23 

friend, but dropping the tags of the day with which 
your spoken discourse would naturally be garnished. 
Be familiar, but by no means vulgar. At any rate, 
be easy, colloquial if you like, but shun those vocables 
which come to us across the Atlantic, or from New- 
market and Whitechapel, with which the gilded youth 
and journalists "up-to-date" love to salt their lan- 
guage. Do not make us " sit up " too much, or al- 
ways " take a back seat " ; do not ask us to " ride for a 
fall," to " hurry up," or " boom it all we know." Noth- 
ing is more irritating in print than the iteration of 
slang, and those stale phrases with which " the half- 
baked " seek to convince us that they are *' in the 
swim" and "going strong" — if I may borrow the 
language of the day — that Volapiik of the smart and 
knowing world. It offends me like the reek of last 
night's tobacco. 

It is a good rule for a young writer to avoid more 
than twenty or thirty words without a full stop, and 
not to put more than two commas in each sentence, so 
that its clauses should not exceed three. This, of 
course, only in practice. There is no positive law. 
A fine writer can easily place in a sentence one hun- 
dred words, and five or six minor clauses with their 
proper commas and colons. Ruskin was wont to toss 
off two or three hundred words and five-and-twenty 
commas without a pause. But even in the hand of 
such a magician this ends in failure, and is really 
grotesque in effect, for no such sentence can be spoken 
aloud. A beginner can seldom manage more than 
twenty-five words in one sentence with perfect ease. 
Nearly all young writers, just as men did in the early 



24 FREDERIC HARRISON 

ages of prose composition, drift into ragged, prepos- 
terous, inorganic sentences, without beginning, middle, 
or end, which they ought to break into two or three. 

And then they hunt up terms that are fit for science, 
poetry, or devotion. They affect " evolution " and 
" factors," " the interaction of forces," " the co-ordina- 
tion of organs " ; or else everything is " weird," or 
" opalescent," " debonair," and " enamelled," so that 
they will not call a spade a spade. I do not say, stick 
to Saxon words and avoid Latin words as a law of 
language, because English now consists of both : good 
and plain English prose needs both. We seldom get 
the highest poetry without a large use of Saxon, and 
we hardly reach precise and elaborate explanation with- 
out Latin terms. Try to turn precise and elaborate 
explanation into strict Saxon ; and then try to turn 
" Our Father, which art in heaven " into pure Latin 
words. No ! current English prose — not the language 
of poetry or of prayer — must be of both kinds, Saxon 
and Latin. But wherever a Saxon word is enough, 
use it; because if it have all the fulness and the pre- 
cision you need, it is the more simple, the more direct, 
the more homely. 

Never quote anything that is not apt and new. 
Those stale citations of well-worn lines give us a cold 
shudder, as does a pun at a dinner-party. A familiar 
phrase from poetry or Scripture may pass when im- 
bedded in your sentence. But to show it round as a 
nugget which you have just picked up is the innocent 
freshman's snare. Never imitate any writer, however 
good. All imitation in literature is a mischief, as it 
is in art. A great and popular writer ruins his fol- 
lowers and mimics, as did Rafifaelle and Michel 



ENGLISH PROSE 25 

Angelo ; and when he founds a school of style, he im- 
poverishes literature more than he enriches it. John- 
son, Macaulay, Carlyle, Dickens, Ruskin have been the 
cause of flooding us vv^ith cheap copies of their special 
manner. And even now Meredith, Stevenson, Swin- 
burne, and Pater lead the weak to ape their airs and 
graces. All imitation in literature is an evil. I say 
to you, as Mat Arnold said to me (who surely needed 
no such warning) , " Flee Carlylese as the very devil ! " 
Yes, flee Carlylese, Ruskinese, Meredithese, and every 
other ese, past, present, and to come. A writer whose 
style invites imitation so far falls short of being a true 
master. He becomes the parent of caricature, and 
frequently he gives lessons in caricature himself. 

Though you must never Imitate any writer, you may 
study the best writers with care. And for study choose 
those who have founded no school, who have no spe- 
cial and imitable style. Read Pascal and Voltaire in 
French ; Swift, Hume, and Goldsmith in English ; and 
of the moderns, I think, Thackeray and Froude. Rus- 
kin is often too rhapsodical for a student; Meredith too 
whimsical ; Stevenson too " precious," as they love to 
call it ; George Eliot too laboriously enamelled and 
erudite. When you cannot quietly enjoy a picture for 
the curiosity aroused by its so-called *' brushwork," 
the painting may be a surprising sleight-of-hand, but 
is not a masterpiece. 

Read Voltaire, Defoe, Swift, Goldsmith, and you will 
come to understand how the highest charm of words is 
reached without your being able to trace any special 
element of charm. The moment you begin to pick 
out this or that felicity of phrase, this or that sound 
of music in the words, and directly it strikes you as 



26 FREDERIC HARRISON 

eloquent, lyrical, pictorial — then the charm is snapped. 
The- style may be fascinating, brilliant, impressive; but 
it is not perfect. 

Of melody in style I have said nothing; nor indeed 
can anything practical be said. It is a thing infinitely 
subtle, inexplicable, and rare. If your ear does not 
hear the false note, the tautophony or the cacophony in 
the written sentence, as you read it or frame it silently 
to yourself, and hear it thus inaudibly long before your 
eye can pick it forth out of the v^ritten w^ords, nay, 
even when the eye fails to localize it by analysis at all 

— then you have no inborn sense of the melody of 
words, and be quite sure that you can never acquire it. 
One living Englishman has it in the highest form ; for 
the melody of Ruskin's prose may be matched with that 
of Milton and Shelley. I hardly know any other Eng- 
lish prose which retains the ring of that ethereal music 

— echoes of which are more often heard in our poetry 
than in our prose. Nay, since it is beyond our reach, 
wholly incommunicable, defiant of analysis and rule, 
it may be more wise to say no more. 

Read Swift, Defoe, Goldsmith, if you care to know 
what is pure English. I need hardly tell you to read 
another and a greater Book. The Book which begot 
English prose still remains its supreme type. The Eng- 
lish Bible is the true school of English literature. It 
possesses every quality of our language in its highest 
form — except for scientific precision, practical affairs, 
and philosophic analysis. It would be ridiculous to 
write an essay on metaphysics, a political article, or a 
novel in the language of the Bible. Indeed, it would 
be ridiculous to write anything at all in the language 



ENGLISH PROSE 27 

of the Bible. But if you care to know the best that 
our literature can give in simple noble prose — mark, 
learn, and inwardly digest the Holy Scriptures in the 
English tongue. 



IV 

The Principle of Sincerity 

By George Henry Lewes ^ 

In all sincere speech there is power, not neces- 
sarily great power, but as much as the speaker is cap- 
able of. Speak for yourself and from yourself, or be 
silent. It can be of no good that you should tell in 
your " clever " feeble way what another has already 
told us with the dynamic energy of conviction. If 
you can tell us something that your own eyes have 
seen, your own mind has thought, your own heart has 
felt, you will have power over us, and all the real 
power that is possible for you. If what you have seen 
is trivial, if what you have thought is erroneous, if 
what you have felt is feeble, it would assuredly 
be better that you should not speak at all ; but if you 
insist on speaking Sincerity will secure the uttermost 
of power. 

1 This selection is reprinted from Chapter IV of G. H. Lewes' Prin- 
ciples of Success in Literature, first published as a series of papers in 
the Fortnightly Review, of which Lewes was editor, in 1865. George 
Henry Lewes, 1817-1878, was an English journalist and literary man 
who lived with Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot) as her husband from 
1854 until his death in 1878. Lewes was a versatile and brilliant 
author of literary, dramatic, philosophical, and scientific works. What- 
ever the subject he dealt with he brought to it a large fund of good 
sense, vivacity and independence. Perhaps his best known works are 
his Biographical History of Philosophy, 1845-6, and his Life and Works 
of Goethe, 1855. He was a disciple of Comte and the Positivist philos- 
ophy alluded to in the note on Mr. Frederic Harrison above. — Editor. 

28 



THE PRINCIPLE OF SINCERITY 29 

The delusions of self-love cannot be prevented, but 
intellectual misconceptions as to the means of achiev- 
ing success may be corrected. Thus although it may 
not be possible for any introspection to discover whether 
we have genius or effective power, it is quite possible 
to know whether we are trading upon borrowed capi- 
tal, and whether the eagle's feathers have been picked 
up by us, or grow from our own wings. I hear some 
one of my young readers exclaim against the disheart- 
ening tendency of what is here said. Ambitious of 
success, and conscious that he has no great resources 
within his own experience, he shrinks from the idea 
of being thrown upon his naked faculty and limited 
resources, when he feels himself capable of dexter- 
ously using the resources of others, and so producing 
an effective work. " Why," he asks, " must I con- 
fine myself to my own small experience, when I feel 
persuaded that it will interest no one? Why express 
the opinions to which my own investigations have led 
me when I suspect that they are incomplete, perhaps 
altogether erroneous, and when I know that they will 
not be popular because they are unlike those which 
have hitherto found favor? Your restrictions would 
reduce two-thirds of our writers to silence ! " 

This reduction would, I suspect, be welcomed by 
every one except the gagged writers ; but as the idea 
of its being operative is too chimerical for us to en- 
tertain it, and as the purpose of these pages is to ex- 
pound the principles of success and failure, not to make 
Quixotic onslaughts on the windmills of stupidity and 
conceit, I answer my young interrogator : " Take 
warning and do not write. Unless you believe in your- 
self, only noodles will believe in you, and they but 



30 GEORGE HENRY LEWES 

tepidly. If your experience seems trivial to you, it 
must seem trivial to us. If your thoughts are not 
fervid convictions, or sincere doubts, they will not 
have the power of convictions and doubts. To be- 
lieve in yourself is the first step ; to proclaim your be- 
lief the next. You cannot assume the power of an- 
other. No jay becomes an eagle by borrowing a few 
eagle feathers. It is true that your sincerity will not 
be a guarantee of power. You may believe that to 
be important and novel which we all recognize as trivial 
and old. You may be a madman, and believe yourself 
a prophet. You may be a mere echo, and believe your- 
self a voice. These are among the delusions against 
which none of us are protected. But if Sincerity is 
not necessarily a guarantee of power, it is a necessary 
condition of power, and no genius or prophet can exist 
without it." 

" The highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and 
Milton," says Emerson, " is that they set at nought 
books and traditions, and spoke not what men, 
but what they thought. A man should learn to detect 
and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his 
mind from within, more than the lustre of the firma- 
ment of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without 
notice his thought because it is his. In every work 
of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; 
they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty." 
It is strange that any one who has recognized the in- 
dividuality of all works of lasting influence, should not 
also recognize the fact that his own individuality ought 
to be steadfastly preserved. As Emerson says in con- 
tinuation, " Great works of art have no more affecting 
lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our 



THE PRINCIPLE OF SINCERITY 31 

spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexi- 
bihty, then most when the whole cry of voices is on the 
other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say with 
masterly good sense precisely what we have thought 
and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take 
with shame our opinion from another."^ Accepting 
the opinions of another and the tastes of another is 
very different from agreement in opinion and taste. 
Originality is independence, not rebellion; it is sincer- 
ity, not antagonism. Whatever you believe to be true 
and false, that proclaim to be true and false; what- 
ever you think admirable and beautiful, that should 
be your model, even if all your friends and all the 
critics storm at you as a crotchet-monger and an eccen- 
tric. Whether the public will feel its truth and beauty 
at once, or after long years, or never cease to regard it 
as paradox and ugliness, no man can foresee ; enough 
for you to know that you have done your best, have 
been true to yourself, and that the utmost power 
inherent in your work has been displayed. 

An orator whose purpose is to persuade men must 
speak the things they wish to hear; an orator, whose 
purpose is to move men, must also avoid disturbing 
the emotional effect by any obtrusion of intellectual 
antagonism ; but an author whose purpose is to instruct 
men, who appeals to the intellect, must be careless of 
their opinions, and think only of truth. It will often 
be a question when a man is or is not wise in advancing 
unpalatable opinions, or in preaching heresies ; but it 
can never be a question that a man should be silent if 

1 The citations from Emerson and Ruskin in this essay have been 
corrected in places where they were inexactly quoted in the Fortnightly 
Review. 



32 GEORGE HENRY LEWES 

unprepared to speak the truth as he conceives it. Def- 
erence to popular opinion is one great source of bad 
writing, and is all the more disastrous because the 
deference is paid to some purely hypothetical require- 
ment. When a man fails to see the truth of certain 
generally accepted views, there is no law compelling 
him to provoke animosity by announcing his dissent. 
He may be excused if he shrink from the lurid glory 
of martyrdom; he may be justified in not placing him- 
self in a position of singularity. He may even be 
commended for not helping to perplex mankind with 
doubts which he feels to be founded on limited and 
possibly erroneous investigation. But if allegiance to 
truth lays no stern command upon him to speak out 
his immature dissent, it does lay a stern command 
not to speak out hypocritical assent. There are 
many justifications of silence; there can be none of 
insincerity. 

Nor is this less true of minor questions ; it applies 
equally to opinions on matters of taste and personal 
feeling. Why should I echo what seem to me the 
extravagant praises of Raphael's ' Transfiguration,' 
when, in truth, I do not greatly admire that famous 
work? There is no necessity for me to speak on the 
subject at all; but if I do speak, surely it is to utter 
my impressions, and not to repeat what others have 
uttered. Here, then, is a dilemma ; if I say what I 
really feel about this work, after vainly endeavoring 
day after day to discover the transcendent merits dis- 
covered by thousands (or at least proclaimed by them), 
there is every likelihood of my incurring the contempt 
of connoisseurs, and of being reproached with want of 
taste in art. This is the bugbear which scares thou- 



THE PRINCIPLE OF SINCERITY 33 

sands. For myself, I would rather incur the contempt 
of connoisseurs than my own; the reproach of de- 
fective taste is more endurable than the reproach of 
insincerity. Suppose I am deficient in the requisite 
knowledge and sensibility, shall I be less so by pre- 
tending to admire what really gives me no exquisite 
enjoyment? Will the pleasure I feel in pictures be 
enhanced because other men consider me right in my 
admiration, or diminished because they consider me 
wrong ? ^ 

The opinion of the majority is not lightly to be 
rejected; but neither is it to be carelessly echoed. 
There is something noble in the submission to a great 
renown, which makes all reverence a healthy attitude 
if it be genuine. When I think of the immense fame 
of Raphael, and of how many high and delicate minds 
have found exquisite delight even in the ' Transfigura- 
tion,' and especially when I recall how others of his 
works have affected me, it is natural to feel some 
diffidence in opposing the judgment of men whose 
studies have given them the best means of forming 
that judgment — a diffidence which may keep me silent 
on the matter. To start with the assumption that 
you are right, and all who oppose you are fools, can- 
not be a safe method. Nor in spite of a conviction 

1 I have never thoroughly understood the painful anxiety of people to 
be shielded against the dishonoring suspicion of not rightly appreciat- 
ing pictures, even when the very phrases they use betray their igno- 
rance and insensibility. Many will avow their indifference to music, 
and almost boast of their ignorance of science; will sneer at abstract 
theories, and profess the most tepid interest in history, who would 
feel it an unpardonable insult if you doubted their enthusiasm for 
painting and the " old masters " (by them secretly identified with the 
brown masters). It is an insincerity fostered by general pretense. 
Each man is afraid to declare his real sentiments in the presence of 
others equally timid. Massive authority overawes genuine feeling. 



34 GEORGE HENRY LEWES 

that much of the admiration expressed for the ' Trans- 
figuration ' is Hp-homage and tradition, ought the non- 
admiring to assume that all of it is insincere. It is 
quite compatible with modesty to be perfectly inde- 
pendent, and with sincerity to be respectful to the 
opinions and tastes of others. If you express any 
opinion, you are bound to express your real opinion; 
let critics and admirers utter what dithyrambs they 
please. Were this terror of not being thought correct 
in taste once got rid of, how many stereotyped judg- 
ments on books and pictures would be broken up! 
and the result of this sincerity would be some really 
valuable criticism. In the presence of Raphael's 
' Sistine Madonna,' Titian's ' Peter the Martyr,' or 
Masaccio's great frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel, one 
feels as if there had been nothing written about these 
mighty works, so little does any eulogy discriminate 
the elements of their profound effects, so little have 
critics expressed their own thoughts and feelings. 
Yet every day some wandering connoisseur stands 
before these pictures, and at once, without waiting 
to let them sink deep into his mind, discovers all the 
merits which are stereotyped in the criticisms, and 
discovers nothing else. He does not wait to feel, he 
is impatient to range himself with men of taste; he 
discards all genuine impressions, replacing them with 
vague conceptions of what he is expected to see. 

Inasmuch as success must be determined by the rela- 
tion between the work and the public, the sincerity 
which leads a man into open revolt against established 
opinions may seem to be an obstacle. Indeed, pub- 
lishers, critics, and friends are always loud in their 
prophecies against originality and independence on this 



THE PRINCIPLE OF SINCERITY 35 

very ground ; they do their utmost to stifle every 
attempt at novelty, because they fix their eyes upon a 
hypothetical public taste, and think that only what has 
already been proved successful can again succeed ; for- 
getting that whatever has once been done need not be 
done over again, and forgetting that what is now 
commonplace was once originality. There are cases 
in which a disregard of public opinion will inevitably 
call forth opprobrium or neglect ; but there is no case 
in which Sincerity is not strength. If I advance new 
views in Philosophy or Theology, I cannot expect to 
have many adherents among minds altogether unpre- 
pared for such views ; yet it is certain that even those 
who most fiercely oppose me will recognize the power 
of my voice if it is not a mere echo; and the very 
novelty will challenge attention, and at last gain 
adherents if my views have any real insight. At any 
rate the point to be considered is this, that whether 
the novel views excite opposition or applause, the one 
condition of their success is that they be believed in 
by the propagator. The public can only be really 
moved by what is genuine. Even an error if believed 
in will have greater force than an insincere truth. Lip- 
advocacy only rouses lip-homage. It is belief which 
gives momentum. 

Nor is it any serious objection to what is here said, 
that insincerity and timid acquiescence in the opinion 
and tastes of the public do often gain applause and 
temporary success. Sanding the sugar is not imme- 
diately unprofitable. There is an unpleasant popular- 
ity given to falsehood in this world of ours ; but we love 
the truth notwithstanding, and with a more enduring 
love. Who does not know what it is to listen to public 



36 GEORGE HENRY LEWES 

speakers pouring forth expressions of hollow belief 
and sham enthusiasm, snatching at commonplaces 
with a fervor as of faith, emphasizing insincerities 
as if to make up by emphasis what is wanting in 
feeling, all the while saying not only what they do not 
believe, but what the listeners know they do not be- 
lieve, and what the listeners, though they roar assent, 
do not themselves beheve — a turbulence of sham, the 
very noise of which stuns the conscience? Is such 
an orator really enviable, although thunders of applause 
may have greeted his efforts? Is that success, al- 
though the newspapers all over the kingdom may be 
reporting the speech ? What influence remains when 
the noise of the shouts has died away? Whereas, if 
on the same occasion one man gave utterance to a 
sincere thought, even if it were not a very wise 
thought, although the silence of the public — perhaps 
its hisses — may have produced an impression of 
failure, yet there is success, for the thought will re- 
appear and mingle with the thoughts of men to be 
adopted or combated by them, and may perhaps in a 
few years mark out the speaker as a man better worth 
Hstening to than the noisy orator whose insincerity was 
so much cheered. 

The same observation applies to books. An author 
who waits upon the times, and utters only what he 
thinks the world would like to hear, who sails with 
the stream, admiring everything which it is " correct 
taste " to admire, despising everything which has not 
yet received that Hall-mark, sneering at the thoughts 
of a great thinker not yet accepted as such, and slav- 
ishly repeating the small phrases of a thinker who has 
gained renown, flippant and contemptuous towards 



THE PRINCIPLE OF SINCERITY 37 

opinions which he has not taken the trouble to under- 
stand, and never venturing to oppose even the errors 
of men in authority, such an author may indeed by dint 
of a. certain dexterity in assorting the mere husks of 
opinion gain the applause of reviewers, who will call 
him a thinker, and of indolent men and women who 
will pronounce him " so clever " ; but triumphs of this 
kind are like oratorical triumphs after dinner. Every 
autumn the earth is strewed with the dead leaves of 
such vernal successes. 

I would not have the reader conclude that because 
I advocate plain-speaking even of unpopular views, I 
mean to imply that originality and sincerity are always 
in opposition to public opinion. There are many 
points both of doctrine and feeling in which the world 
is not likely to be wrong. But in all cases it is desir- 
able that men should not pretend to believe opinions 
which they really reject, or express emotions they do 
not feel. And this rule is universal. Even truthful 
and modest men will sometimes violate the rule under 
the mistaken idea of being eloquent by means of the 
diction of eloquence. This is a source of bad Litera- 
ture. There are certain views in Religion, Ethics, and 
Politics, which readily lend themselves to eloquence, be- 
cause eloquent men have written largely on them, and 
the temptation to secure this facile effect often seduces 
men to advocate these views, in preference to views 
they really see to be more rational. That this elo- 
quence at second-hand is but feeble in its effect, does 
not restrain others from repeating it. Experience 
never seems to teach them that grand speech comes 
only from grand thoughts, passionate speech from pas- 



38 GEORGE HENRY LEWES 

sionate emotions. The pomp and roll of words, the 
trick of phrase, the rhythm and the gesture of an 
orator, may all be imitated, but not his eloquence. No 
man was ever eloquent by trying to be eloquent, but 
only by being so. Trying leads to the vice of " fine 
writing" — the plague-spot of Literature, not only 
unhealthy in itself, and vulgarizing the grand language 
which should be reserved for great thoughts, but en- 
couraging that tendency to select only those views upon 
which a spurious enthusiasm can most readily graft 
the representative abstractions and stirring suggestions 
which will move public applause. The " fine writer " 
will always prefer the opinion which is striking to the 
opinion which is true. He frames his sentences by the 
ear, and is only dissatisfied with them when their 
cadences are ill-distributed, or their diction is too 
familiar. It seldom occurs to him that a sentence 
should accurately express his meaning and no more; 
indeed there is not often a definite meaning to be 
expressed, for the thought which arose vanished while 
he tried to express it, and the sentence, instead of 
being determined by and moulded on a thought, is 
determined by some verbal suggestion. Open any 
book or periodical, and see how frequently the writer 
does not, cannot, mean what he says ; and you will 
observe that in general the defect does not arise from 
any poverty in our language, but from the habitual 
carelessness which allows expressions to be written 
down unchallenged provided they are sufficiently har- 
monious, and not glaringly inadequate. 

The slap-dash insincerity of modern style entirely 
sets at nought the first principle of writing, which is 
accuracy. The art of writing is not, as many seem 



THE PRINCIPLE OF SINCERITY 39 

to imagine, the art of bringing fine phrases into rhyth- 
mical order, but the art of placing before the reader 
intelligible symbols of the thoughts and feelings in 
the writer's mind. Endeavor to be faithful, and if 
there is any beauty in your thought, your style will be 
beautiful; if there is any real emotion to express, the 
expression will be moving. Never rouge your style. 
Trust to your native pallor rather than to cosmetics. 
Try to make us see what you see and to feel what you 
feel, and banish from your mind whatever phrases 
others may have used to express what was in their 
thoughts, but is not in yours. Have you never ob- 
served what a slight impression writers have produced, 
in spite of a profusion of images, antitheses, witty epi- 
grams, and rolling periods, whereas some simpler style, 
altogether wanting in such " brilliant passage," has 
gained the attention and respect of thousands ? 
Whatever is stuck on as ornament affects us as orna- 
ment ; we do not think an old hag young and handsome 
because the jewels flash from her brow and bosom ; if 
we envy her wealth, we do not admire her beauty. 

What " fine writing " is to prosaists, insincere imag- 
ery is to poets : it is introduced for effect, not used as 
expression. To the real poet an image comes spon- 
taneously, or if it comes as an afterthought, it is 
chosen because it expresses his meaning and helps to 
paint the picture which is in his mind, not because it 
is beautiful in itself. It is a symbol, not an ornament. 
Whether the image rise slowly before the mind during 
contemplation, or is seen in the same flash which 
discloses the picture, in each case it arises by natural 
association, and is seen, not sought. The inferior poet 
is dissatisfied with what he sees, and casts about in 



40 GEORGE HENRY LEWES 

search after something more striking. He does not 
wait till an image is borne in upon the tide of mem- 
ory, he seeks for an image that will be picturesque; 
and being without the delicate selective instinct which 
guides the fine artist, he generally chooses something 
which we feel to be not exactly in its right place. He 
thus — 

" With gold and silver covers every part, 
And hides with ornament his want of art." 

Be true to your own soul, and do not try to express 
the thought of another. " H some people," says 
Ruskin, " really see angels where others see only empty 
space, let them paint the angels : only let not anybody 
else think he can paint an angel too, on any calculated 
principles of the angelic." Unhappily this is precisely 
what so many will attempt, inspired by the success of 
the angelic painter. Nor will the failure of others 
warn them. 

Whatever is sincerely felt or believed, whatever 
forms part of the imaginative experience, and is not 
simply imitation or hearsay, may fitly be given to the 
world, and will always maintain an infinite superiority 
over imitative splendor; because although it by no 
means follows that whatever has formed part of the 
artist's experience must be impressive, or can do with- 
out artistic presentation, yet his artistic power will 
always be greater over his own material than over 
another's. Emerson has well remarked that " those 
facts, words, persons, which dwell in a man's memory 
without his being able to say why, remain, because they 
have a relation to him not less real for being as yet 
unapprehended. They are symbols of value to him, 



THE PRINCIPLE OF SINCERITY 41 

as they can interpret parts of his consciousness which 
he would vainly seek words for in the conventional 
images of books and other minds. What attracts my 
attention shall have it, as I will go to the man who 
knocks at my door, while a thousand persons as 
worthy go by it, to whom I give no regard. It is 
enough that these particulars speak to me. A few 
anecdotes, a few traits of character, manners, face, a 
few incidents, have an emphasis in your memory out 
of all proportion to their apparent significance if you 
measure them by the ordinary standards. They relate 
to your gift. Let them have their weight, and do not 
reject them, and cast about for illustrations and facts 
more usual in literature." 

In the notes to the last edition of his poems, Words- 
worth specified the particular occasions which fur- 
nished him with particular images. It was the things 
he had seen which he put into his verses ; and that is 
why they afifect us. It matters little whether the poet 
draws his images directly from present experience, or 
indirectly from memory — whether the sight of the 
slow-sailing swan, that " floats double, swan and 
shadow " be at once transferred to the scene of the 
poem he is writing, or come back upon him in after 
years to complete some picture in his mind ; enough 
that the image be suggested, and not sought. 

The sentence from Ruskin, quoted just now, will 
guard against the misconception that a writer, because 
told to rely on his own experience, is enjoined to forego 
the glory and delight of creation even of fantastic 
types. He is only told never to pretend to see what 
he has not seen. He is urged to follow Imagination 
in her most erratic course, though Hke a will-o'- 



42 GEORGE HENRY LEWES 

wisp she lead over marsh and fen away from the 
haunts of mortals ; but not to pretend that he is follow- 
ing a will-o'-wisp when his vagrant fancy never was 
allured by one. It is idle to paint fairies and goblins 
unless you have a genuine vision of them which forces 
you to paint them. They are poetical objects, but only 
to poetic minds. " Be a plain topographer if you 
possibly can," says Ruskin, " if Nature meant you to 
be anything else, she will force you to it ; but never try 
to be a prophet; go on quietly with your hard camp- 
work, and the spirit will come to you in the camp, 
as it did to Eldad and Medad, if you are appointed to 
have it." Yes: if you are appointed to it; if your 
faculties are such that this high success is possible, it 
will come, provided the faculties are employed with 
sincerity. Otherwise it cannot come. No insincere 
effort can secure it. 

If the advice I give to reject every insincerity in 
writing seem cruel, because it robs the writer of so 
many of his effects — if it seem disheartening to 
earnestly warn a man not to try to be eloquent, but only 
to be eloquent when his thoughts move with an impas- 
sioned largo — if throwing a writer back upon his 
naked faculty seem especially distasteful to those who 
have a painful misgiving that their faculty is small, 
and that the uttermost of their own power would be 
far from impressive, my answer is that I have no hope 
of dissuading feeble writers from the practice of in- 
sincerity, but as under no circumstances can they be- 
come good writers and achieve success, my analysis 
has no reference to them, my advice has no aim at 
them. 

It is to the young and strong, to the ambitious and 



THE PRINCIPLE OF SINCERITY 43 

the earnest, that my words are addressed. It is to wipe 
the film from their eyes, and make them see, as they will 
see directly the truth is placed before them, how easily 
we are all seduced into greater or less insincerity of 
thought, of feeling, and of style, either by reliance on 
other writers, from whom we catch the trick of thought 
and turn of phrase, or from some preconceived view 
of what the public will prefer. It is to the young and 
strong I say : Watch vigilantly every phrase you write, 
and assure yourself that it expresses what you mean; 
watch vigilantly every thought you express, and assure 
yourself that it is yours, not another's; you may 
share it with another, but you must not adopt it from 
him for the nonce. Of course, if you are writing 
humorously or dramatically, you will not be expected to 
write your own serious opinions. Humor may take 
its utmost license, yet be sincere. The dramatic genius 
may incarnate itself in a hundred shapes, yet in each 
it will speak what it feels to be the truth. If you 
are imaginatively representing the feelings of another, 
as in some playful exaggeration or some dramatic 
personation, the truth required of you is imaginative 
truth, not your personal views and feelings. But when 
you write in your own person you must be rigidly 
veracious, neither pretending to admire what you do 
not admire, or to despise what in secret you rather like, 
nor surcharging your admiration and enthusiasm to 
bring you into unison with the public chorus. This 
vigilance may render Literature more laborious; but 
no one ever supposed that success was to be had on 
easy terms; and if you only write one sincere page 
where you might have written twenty insincere pages, 
the one page is worth writing — it is Literature. 



44 GEORGE HENRY LEWES 

Sincerity is not only effective and honorable, it is 
also much less difficult than is commonly supposed. 
To take a trifling example : If for some reason I can- 
not, or do not, choose to verify a quotation which may 
be useful to my purpose, what is to prevent my saying 
that the quotation is taken at second-hand ? It is true, 
if my quotations are for the most part second-hand 
and are acknowledged as such, my erudition will ap- 
pear scanty. But it will only appear what it is. Why 
should I pretend to an erudition which is not mine? 
Sincerity forbids it. Prudence whispers that the pre- 
tense is, after all, vain, because those, and those alone, 
who can rightly estimate erudition will infallibly detect 
my pretense, whereas those whom I have deceived 
were not worth deceiving. Yet in spite of Sincerity 
and Prudence, how shamelessly men compile second- 
hand references, and display in borrowed foot-notes 
a pretense of labor and of accuracy ! I mention this 
merely to show how, even in the humbler class of com- 
pilers, the Principle of Sincerity may find fit illustra- 
tions, and how honest work, even in references, belongs 
to the same category as honest work in philosophy or 
poetry. 



The Value of English to the 
Technical Man 

By John Lyle Harrington ^ 

Language is an instrument, a medium for the ex- 
change of thought. If, in individual instances, both 
speaker and hearer employ words in the same sense 
and arrange them in the same manner, the expressed 
ideas will be perfectly understood, whether the lan- 
guage be in accordance with good usage or not. But, if 

1 This address was first delivered by Mr. Harrington in 1907 to the 
Technological Society of Kansas City, the Engineering Society of the 
University of Missouri, and the Civil Engineering Society of the Uni- 
versity of Kansas. It was printed in pamphlet form and afterwards in- 
cluded in the stimulating and idealistic volume of Addresses to Engi- 
neering Students edited and published by Messrs. Harrington and Wad- 
dell at Kansas City, which is familiar to many students in technical 
schools and should be to all. The address is reprinted here by kind 
permission of the author. 

John Lyle Harrington was born in 1868, educated at the University 
of Kansas and McGill University, Montreal, and is now practising as a 
consulting engineer in Kansas City. He has devoted a good deal of 
unselfish effort to the betterment of engineering education. The seri- 
ousness with which practical engineers view the problem of English 
instruction is shown by the following sentence printed by the editors 
of the Engineering Addresses before this essay: " Upon whether its 
teachings be followed or ignored may depend the success or failure 
of any technical student to attain in after life the highest rank in the 
engineering profession. Possessing a mastery of the English language, 
he may or may not rise to eminence; but without it, he certainly can- 
not. Any engineering student who wilfully neglects the study of his 
own language deserves the failure to attain eminence which assuredly 
will be his fate." — Editor. 

45 



46 JOHN LYLE HARRINGTON 

thought is to be conveyed without loss to a larger 
audience, the medium must be substantially perfect. 
Words must not only be used in accordance with their 
accustomed and generally accepted meanings, and with 
all the shades and niceties of those meanings, but they 
must be arranged in accordance with the accepted con- 
struction of phrase, clause, and sentence ; and the 
whole argument or thesis must be so ordered with 
regard to the sequence and the relations of the various 
ideas that the hearer shall be compelled to understand. 
Discourses in which thoughts, though they be ever so 
clearly expressed, are not arranged in logical order, 
will fail in their purpose, because the argument is con- 
fused and the mind of the hearer is occupied with the 
language instead of the substance of the thought. You 
will recall Sam Weller's remark regarding Mr. Nup- 
kins' eloquence that " his ideas come out so fast they 
knock each other's heads off and you can't tell what he 
is driving at." Like any other instrument, the value 
of language is in direct proportion to our knowledge 
of it and our skill in its use. If we understand it fully 
and use it skillfully it will serve our purpose well, but 
if we are novices and bunglers, only disappointment 
will result. 

Language, though it will not supply the place of 
thought, is a most essential instrument to every man. 
To him who is without important thought to express, 
it is not a very valuable tool. The laborer does not 
require it in handling the pick and shovel ; it is only 
in his social relations that he has much need for 
speech. It is not important that the stoker speak 
fluently, or that the mechanic be an able orator or 
writer. But as we proceed from the lower to the higher 



THE VALUE OF ENGLISH 47 

and more intellectual occupations, the need and the 
value of knowledge and command of language rapidly 
increase. The politician, we sometimes think, makes 
skillful use of language to hide his thought, or to dis- 
semble. Indeed, in all walks of life there are times 
when words are well employed to obscure the thought. 
But the physician must be skillful in the use of lan- 
guage in order to direct and control his patients, as 
well as to write, and to understand the writings of 
his fellow physicians. The clergyman needs it to 
please, to inform, to convince, and to persuade his 
auditors. But the technical man, that is, the engineer, 
the architect, and the applied scientist of every kind, 
finds a sound, accurate knowledge of the language 
essential to him in every part of his work. A wide 
and precise knowledge of words is required in his 
reading as well as in his general writing; in his busi- 
ness and professional conversations even more than 
in those of a social nature. But, in the preparation 
and interpretation of technical correspondence, specifi- 
cations, and contracts, the use of perfect language 
reaches the highest degree of importance. The lawyer 
alone needs to be so much of a precisian, and he attains 
that end by very awkward and cumbersome means. 

The technical man of the highest order is not only a 
cultured gentleman, versed in all the amenities of polite 
society, familiar with the best literature in his own 
language and probably in that of one or two others, 
able to read many branches of learning understand- 
ingly and to discuss them intelligently; but, in addition, 
he has special knowledge of mathematics and the ap- 
plied sciences, and he is not only able to understand 
what is written or spoken but can express his own 



48 JOHN LYLE HARRINGTON 

thought regarding them readily, accurately, and log- 
ically. The successful technical man, it has been 
well said, must know much about everything and 
everything about something, but his ideas and knowl- 
edge are of small value except in so far as he can 
convey them to others ; for, since he does not often 
labor with his hands, he must instruct and direct those 
who do. Thus, language is his most important tool, 
and it certainly behooves him to see that it is always 
in good order. His reputation as a gentleman and as 
a professional man depends very largely upon his 
knowledge and use of English. 

Technical men are peculiarly prone to ofifend in the 
use of their mother-tongue, because they have not, as 
a rule, read deeply in classical literature nor been in- 
structed thoroughly in the construction of the language. 
Their higher education is generally almost entirely tech- 
nical. Most of the engineering schools now require 
for matriculation substantially the same subjects that 
the colleges do, but some of the best still admit stu- 
dents with little more than a grammar school educa- 
tion, supplemented by the rudiments of the natural 
sciences and elementary mathematics. Cultural sub- 
jects are never required to any great extent, and they 
cannot be taught in the course. The curriculum is 
already well filled with scientific, mathematical, and 
technical subjects, and there is not room for a deep 
study of literature and the languages. The technical 
man who has a thorough knowledge of English has 
had the wisdom and patience to supplement his tech- 
nical education by an arts course, has read widely of 
classic literature, or possesses the rare gift of Ian- 



THE VALUE OF ENGLISH 49 

guage. Long continued and intimate association with 
those who employ excellent English will ensure reason- 
ably good usage, in fact such association is almost 
essential, no matter what the education may be ; but 
the knowledge of the language so acquired generally 
breaks down when it is applied to technical matters 
in which extreme accuracy is a requisite and in which 
the terms differ much from those used m ordinary con- 
versation. There is no royal road to a knowledge of 
technical English. 

Some of our better universities are now offering a 
six-years' course which combines the usual arts and 
technical courses, each of which ordinarily occupies 
four years, but which have many subjects in com- 
mon. This is a decided step in the right direction, 
for technical men generally are coming into a more 
complete realization of their deficiencies and are insist- 
ing that young technists be more liberally educated. 
The professional man does not always remain a tech- 
nist, in fact he frequently becomes a man of affairs 
as well, where a liberal education is even more essen- 
tial than in his purely technical work. 

Before passing to a consideration of the specific 
advantages enjoyed by the technical man who uses good 
English, let us glance at some of the grosser faults 
of which so many are guilty, for there is no better way 
to attain a comprehension of the good than by con- 
trasting it with the bad. It has been well said that 
it is no virtue to speak good English, but that it is a 
disgrace to use bad English. The upright man does 
not feel the burden of the law, but to the criminal it 
is oppressive. 

You will say that it is absurd to state that men 



50 JOHN LYLE HARRINGTON 

who have graduated from any college cannot spell cor- 
rectly, but many of them cannot. S-e-d, said, p-e-a-r, 
pier, are extreme but true examples. It is very com- 
mon to find misspelled words in letters written by 
young engineers. They consider such errors of no 
material consequence, because they are not technical 
errors. The mind has been so fixed upon the scientific 
work during the course of study, and while the early 
experience is being acquired, that such matters as lan- 
guage and culture seem to be of little importance. But 
the recipient of the letter generally takes a different 
view of the matter, for he justly considers the writer 
something of an ignoramus. 

Errors of orthography and orthoepy are both due 
to unpardonable carelessness and ignorance, for any 
one can learn to spell and to pronounce correctly, and 
no man should be given a degree or a diploma by any 
institution of learning unless he does so habitually. 

Grossly bad grammar is also very common. • It gen- 
erally arises from carelessness in ordering the thought 
and speech rather than from lack of knowledge of cor- 
rect usage, but it is frequently attributed to ignorance, 
and certainly the penalty is not too severe. In many 
instances, however, ignorance is the true cause of the 
error. The study of grammar commonly ceases when 
the student leaves the graded schools. Thereafter, he 
assumes that his knowledge of the subject is full and 
complete and that he need give it no further attention, 
notwithstanding the fact that his capacity for thought 
and the need of means for its expression continue to 
increase. His vocabulary grows ; but his knowledge 
of the fundamental principles which govern its use 
not only does not expand as his needs require, but it 



THE VALUE OF ENGLISH 51 

is allowed to become uncertain and to diminish through 
lack of exercise. When the matter is thought of at 
all, it is assumed that in some vague, uncertain way- 
habit will serve, instead of knowledge and understand- 
ing. The grammar is put away, like other childish 
things. 

But the highest skill in the use of language is not 
attained when our words are "properly spelled or pro- 
nounced and our sentences formed in accordance with 
the rules of grammar. In fact these are only bare 
and absolute essentials — the skeleton of our language 
which must still be provided with flesh and blood and 
nerves before it will live and fulfill its mission. The 
whole purpose for which language is employed is to 
impress our thought upon others in such a way that 
they shall feel or think or act as we desire. To attain 
this end it is essential that we make intelligent use of 
the arts of rhetoric and oratory, that we know the 
laws of composition, the methods of ordering and con- 
structing our discourse so that it will lead the minds 
of our hearers wherever we wish, and not only convey 
our thought but induce our auditors to think along 
the lines that will benefit our purpose. 

The style of the discourse must be pleasing and 
suited to the object. Especially for the technical man's 
purpose, it should be crisp and clear. An elegant, 
showy style weakens the discourse and is wholly unde- 
sirable except where immediate oratorical effect is 
sought. . . . Short words of English origin are in- 
variably stronger and more rugged than their longer 
and more elegant synonyms which are derived from 
the Latin or Greek; hence their use is nearly always 



52 JOHN LYLE HARRINGTON 

to be preferred except where the subject matter is 
abstruse or where nice distinctions in meaning are 
important. Then the Greek and Latin derivatives are 
frequently the more serviceable. But simplicity and 
force demand simple, direct language. The style 
should be so smooth and so unostentatious that the 
hearer's attention is not drawn to the language, but is 
left entirely free to follow the course of the thought. 

It is deplorably rare to find young technical men in 
possession of an intimate knowledge of rhetoric. 
Business correspondence is often annoy ingly protracted 
because one or both of the parties conducting it ignore 
the simple law of unity and fail to round out and com- 
plete the subject under discussion. Errors of style 
and gross errors of composition are quite as frequent 
in the correspondence of the technically educated man 
as they are in that of the ordinary clerk who went to 
work when he left the grammar school. It is because 
engineers are so little accustomed to order their thought 
and language properly that they have so little part in 
the business and correspondence of the corporations 
which employ them. It is notorious that a technist 
is rarely a good business man. This is partly because 
of the exaggerated importance he gives to technical 
matters, but very largely because his thought is clum- 
sily expressed and awkwardly ordered. 



The character of the technical man's language is 
important in his social and business intercourse ; in his 
business and professional correspondence ; in the pro- 
mulgation of orders, rules, and regulations for the 
guidance of those under his direction ; in the prepara- 



THE VALUE OF ENGLISH 53 

tion of specifications, contracts, and reports ; in writ- 
ing and delivering addresses and technical papers ; and 
in writing technical books for the advancement of his 
profession. 

In conversation, earnestness and force may, in some 
measure, counteract the evil influence of bad English ; 
but, since less care is commonly given to the spoken 
word than to the written, the results of bad habits of 
speech are much the same in either case ; and in mo- 
ments of special interest or excitement the habitual 
language is employed. Speech is usually heard but 
once, therefore its errors are much more likely to pass 
unnoticed than those which are written and may be 
read repeatedly ; and the audience of the speaker is 
much more limited than that of the writer; therefore 
it would seem less important to speak than to write 
correctly. But it must not be forgotten that in con- 
versation there is no time, as a rule, to give thought 
to the form of speech ; and that all the errors one is 
accustomed to make are Ha])le to occur. The habit of 
using good English should be so firmly fixed that one 
is not conscious of it. 

A technical man is, presumably, an educated man; 
and if he do not speak like one, suspicion is cast upon 
the entire range of his learning. When a man cannot 
spell correctly, or use ordinarily good grammar (and 
there are many university men who cannot) it is diffi- 
cult to convince others that he is professionally able. 
The great majority of technical men occupy salaried 
positions in the organizations of railways, govern- 
ments, constructing companies, and manufacturing 
corporations. These positions are obtained by means of 
acquaintances made in a social way, by interview, by 



54 JOHN LYLE HARRINGTON 

correspondence, or on account of an earned reputa- 
tion. Yet I have granted interviews to many technical 
men w^ho spoke hke laborers, and have received hun- 
dreds of letters from them that would be a disgrace 
to a grammar school scholar. There are technically 
educated men who say " I have saw," " I seen," and 
" I done " ; and there are men in high places who re- 
quire no further proof of the speaker's deep igno- 
rance, not only of English but of technical matters as 
well. One who is thus ignorant of the language finds 
social progress substantially impossible. This may 
seem a trivial matter and foreign to our purpose, but 
it is not. Matters of very large importance are often 
settled by favor, and favor frequently follows social 
position. Other things being equal, almost anyone will 
show his friend the preference in business or profes- 
sional matters. It is even common to stretch a point 
in favor of a friend. 

Language has large weight in classifying a man, 
infinitely more than manner or dress. It exhibits his 
breeding and indicates his social status. I do not mean 
that it shows whether he belongs to the so-called 
" Smart Set," but whether he is of the educated, cul- 
tured class, whether you would care to entertain him 
at all, and, if so, whether you would send him to your 
less or more select club, or whether you may extend 
the extreme courtesy of inviting him to your home. 
This may appear at first glance to be of small conse- 
quence; but great things often result from associa- 
tions quickly formed. In fact, such social relations 
make largely for success or failure in the business or 
professional world. Many have received the oppor- 
tunity which led to eminence through the recommen- 



THE VALUE OF ENGLISH 55 

dation of a casual acquaintance who was favorably 
impressed. 

There are many vocations in which it is not essen- 
tial that a man be cultured and intelligent; but the 
technical professions are not among them. Nothing 
so surely marks a man's secret habits of thought, his 
real character, as the little tricks of speech which are 
exhibited when his mind is upon the matter rather than 
the manner of his speech. If his thought be habitually 
coarse, crude, or brutal, his speech will make the fact 
manifest at times ; and the speech of a moment fre- 
quently produces a permanent and .vital effect. 

In business correspondence the value of good usage 
is still more manifest than in conversation, since the 
written word is permanent, and correspondence greatly 
extends the field of one's intercourse. A letter very 
probably passes through many hands and multiplies 
the good or bad impressions of the writer it produces. 
If its import is not clear, it may cause disagreement 
or involve serious financial disadvantage to the writer. 
Even bad punctuation will often seriously alter the 
entire meaning of a sentence, and particularly bad 
grammar at once stamps a writer as being more or less 
of an ignoramus. The art of letter writing, like a 
knowledge of grammar, is commonly considered to 
be within the range of everyone's learning and skill ; 
but anyone who has had large experience in business 
correspondence knows that few men write good letters. 
It is so rare to find a matter which is composed of 
more than one or two items, clearly, concisely, and 
thoroughly discussed in a letter that favorable atten- 
tion is immediately attracted to its writer. Not a few 
men owe the opportunity for advancement to their 



56 JOHN LYLE HARRINGTON 

ability to write a good letter. Even though one be 
thoroughly versed in his subject and his discourse be 
well worth the time and attention of men of affairs, 
bad grammar will cast such suspicion over his whole 
equipment of learning that his argument will often be 
put aside without substantial consideration. Bad 
grammar is not a bar to the acquisition of money, 
but it substantially prohibits the acquisition of high 
position in the scientific world. 

The detrimental results of bad English in conversa- 
tion or in correspondence are by no means so certain 
as in the more formal technical papers. In the prepa- 
ration of articles for the technical press, and papers 
for the learned societies, there is time to study form 
and style and to eliminate errors due to haste ; hence, 
when such matters are ill written, it is not unfairly 
argued that the writer is ignorant of the correct use 
of the language. Such an opinion, widely dissem- 
inated, as it is likely to be when it originates thus, is 
exceedingly detrimental to the writer. It weakens his 
arguments, causes him to be misunderstood, or so 
detracts from the interest of his readers that the 
matter is not read. The idea that a technical paper 
is dry at best, and that the English employed in it is 
of small consequence has long been proved incorrect. 
There is so much nowadays that it is well written that 
no busy professional man is willing to spare the extra 
time and effort necessary to read and digest an ill 
written paper. 

A merchant may advertise his wares, a manufac- 
turer his product, but reasonable modesty and his code 
of ethics prevent a professional man from advertising 
his skill. If he does not become known by his work or 



THE VALUE OF ENGLISH 57 

his writings, he remains in comparative obscurity. His 
abiHty is clearly exposed in his writings, in which he 
gives to the profession his best thought; and if he 
cannot write easily and well he will probably not write 
at all, for the censorship of the learned societies is now 
severe and is rapidly growing more so. Every normal, 
healthy-minded technical man desires to leave a per- 
manent record of the results of his best thought and 
work to aid his co-workers and those who come after 
him. An ably written description of work performed, 
discoveries made, or methods developed accomplishes 
more for the advancement of science than many well 
designed and well executed constructions. The latter 
benefit those who see them ; the former may help all 
who can read. 

Provoking and expensive errors often arise from the 
misunderstanding of badly expressed orders, rules, 
and regulations. In large corporations, especially in 
railway, contracting, and engineering companies where 
employees are distributed over a wide area, it is im- 
possible for an officer to give individual instructions, 
or to see personally that they are carried out ; hence, 
general instructions must be so clear that they cannot 
be misunderstood or evaded. It is hardly necessary 
to say that the consequences of a mistake in train 
orders, in instructions regarding breaking track for 
repairs or renewals, or for making temporary con- 
struction to span washouts, may result in expensive 
and fatal accidents. And even minor errors, oft re- 
peated, may prove very costly. 

But the preparation of reports, specifications, and 
contracts is the most particular and momentous task 
the technical man has to perform. A misused word, 



58 JOHN LYLE HARRINGTON 

a phrase whose meaning is ambiguous, a paragraph that 
is confused, or the omission of a direction or a pre- 
caution, may result in great damage, to both the client 
and the technical man. It is not enough to be care- 
ful in a general way. Every word, every phrase, 
every sentence, has a direct and vital bearing on the 
work governed by the documents. I have known the 
presence in a contract of a single word of equivocal 
meaning to cost one of the parties many thousands of 
dollars, though when the contract was drawn there 
was no question regarding the intent of the parties 
to it. Probably the majority of the civil lawsuits are 
caused not by trickery or deceit or dishonesty, but by 
the use of ambiguous words and phrases, bad ordering 
of the matter, incompleteness, and other faults in the 
language of the correspondence, specifications, and 
contracts. There is no more certain way for the en- 
gineer to protect his own and his client's interests than 
to prepare all documents in accordance with the best 
English usage as well as with technical skill ; and there 
is no surer way to lay the foundation for trouble and 
financial loss than to neglect the character of his 
language. 

Notwithstanding the vital importance of clear, con- 
cise, and full expression in such documents, it is not 
uncommon to find specifications and contracts so bad 
in their construction that they fail utterly in their pur- 
pose. Let me quote an illustration from the specifica- 
tions, prepared by an architectural firm of some repute, 
for the construction of a building which cost nearly 
one hundred thousand dollars. 

" Material and Workmanship. The entire frame 
work, columns, beams, etc., as indicated by the fram- 



THE VALUE OF ENGLISH 59 

ing plans, or as specified, is to be of wrought steel, of 
quality hereinafter designated, all materials to be pro- 
vided and put in place by this contractor. All work 
to be done in a neat and skillful manner, and is to 
guarantee the construction and workmanship with a 
bond equal to amount of tender for a term of five 
years, satisfactory to the proprietor and architects, to 
properly carry or support the loads it is designated to 
carry, namely its own weight, the weight of the several 
floors, roof and walls resting thereon, a 10,000 gravity 
tank, and the pressure of any wind which may not be 
designated a hurricane, and future three stories. 
. . . The floor beams are to be calculated for a 
maximum load of 150 lbs. to the sq. ft. (using C type 
IV of the Clinton Fire-Proof system, of Clinton, 
Mass.), The columns are to be calculated for a ver- 
tical load above mentioned and for horizontals and 
wind pressure and snow pressure, also roof. The 
whole to be calculated heavy enough for three addi- 
tional stories on building should they be put on at any 
time, with connections at top columns to receive future 
columns. The columns on ground floor supporting 
front to be calculated in same proportion with all the 
rods necessary where shown. The whole of the col- 
umns to be one size throughout, those that carry more 
weight reinforced, and all columns to be kept as small 
as possible in proper construction. Each column to 
have ^-inch holes bored or punched every 4 ft. 6 in. 
in height on each corner (for use of other trades to 
fasten metal lath)." 

The building was constructed under these specifica- 
tions, not according to them ; that would be impossible. 
But it is hardly necessary to say that the proprietors 



6o JOHN LYLE HARRINGTON 

interested were not safe-guarded. The wretched 
paragraphs quoted are no worse than a contractor finds 
in specifications ahnost every day, for they are com- 
posed, as a large number of engineers and architects 
compose their specifications, by copying and combin- 
ing sentences or paragraphs from various sources, in- 
stead of by writing them from fundamental knowledge 
of the construction desired. In such instances the 
client is protected infinitely more by the honesty, 
knowledge, and skill of the contractor than by those of 
the architect. 

Very few railway specifications for complicated 
structures are so well written that a contractor cannot 
comply with them to the letter, yet give the company 
construction far inferior to what the writer of the 
specifications intended, and thereby gain for himself 
material advantage. 

The lawyers and the courts are kept busy rectifying 
the blunders of other professional men who do ill what 
they are paid to do well. I know of one contractor 
who has grown gray in the business of constructing 
buildings, who has never completed a contract without 
a lawsuit, and who has never lost a lawsuit. This 
speaks ill for the work of the architects under whom 
he worked, yet they are probably no worse than their 
fellows. If it were not good policy to be reasonably 
honest, many another contractor might easily approach 
his record. 

It would appear that we have given more attention 
to bad than to good English. This is not illogical, for, 
manifestly, if the bad be eliminated the good will re- 
main ; and if the evils arising from the abuse of the 
language be fully comprehended, there will certainly 



THE VALUE OF ENGLISH 6i 

be serious endeavor to improve the usage. The laws 
of the language are commonly violated from mere care- 
lessness. Slang and provincialisms creep into the 
speech and destroy its force and elegance ; the expres- 
sion becomes slovenly and the thought obscure ; and 
what constitutes good English is forgotten unless 
reasonable attention is paid to the speech. 

Language itself is merely an instrument. Beautiful 
English does not constitute a meritorious discourse. 
The speaker or writer who uses language correctly 
and fluently but expresses no important thought is a 
failure; for the sole service good English can render 
is to convey the speaker's thought and purpose fully 
and accurately to the minds of his auditors. But this 
service alone will amply repay years of study and a life 
of care and attention to the use of the English 
language. 



VI 

The Standard of Usage 

By Thomas R. Lounsbury ^ 

In his life of Story, Mr, Henry James mentions 
the presence of the sculptor at a dinner given in 
London by the critic and essayist John Forster. Dur- 
ing the course of it the talk chanced to turn upon a 
letter from Hampden to Sir John Elliot which had 
been read. The peculiar beauty of its expression struck 
all present. Story observed that the English language 
seemed no longer to have its old elegance. This re- 
mark led to an outburst from the host. " As soon," 
said Forster, " as grammar is printed in any language, 

1 This essay is taken from The Standard of Usage in English, by 
Thomas R. Lounsbury, copyright, 1907, 1908, by Harper and Brothers, 
and is reproduced here by special arrangement with that firm. Thomas 
R. Lounsbury, 1838-1915, served actively for twenty-five years as Pro- 
fessor of English in Yale University, and is the author of important 
works in literary history and philology. This essay and the book from 
which it is taken are especially noteworthy as expressing in popular 
form the principles of usage recognized by authorities on language but 
violated often by purists and pedantic teachers, who, in their anxiety for 
correctness, tend to go to the other extreme and to curtail the legitimate 
resources and variety of the English language. Questions of usage are 
clear enough as to principle but difficult in practice: they are to be 
mastered not mainly by reference to grammars and rhetorics and dic- 
tionaries, but by observation of the practice of standard authors: it is 
much easier to make a positive statement, based on one's reading, as 
to what is good, than to make the negative one, as to what is not. 
All of which indicates that instruction in language is not only more 
profitable but also more likely to be sound if it is positive rather than 
negative in character. — Editor. 

62 



THE STANDARD OF USAGE 63 

it begins to go. The Greeks had no grammar when 
their best works were written, and the dechne of 
style began with the appearance of one." 

Forster has not been the only one to take this view, 
nor was he the first to give it utterance. Extrava- 
gantly stated as it is, there is in it a certain element 
of truth. The early authors of a tongue have in their 
minds no thought of possible censure from any 
linguistic critic. Every one does what is right in his 
own eyes, restrained, so far as he is restrained, only 
by that sense of propriety which genius possesses as 
its birthright and great talents frequently acquire. But 
in later times, when grammars and manuals of usage 
have come to abound, there is frequent consultation of 
them, or, rather, a constant dread of violating rules 
which they have promulgated. Such a method of pro- 
ceeding is not conducive to the best results in the 
matter of expression. When men think not so much 
of what they want to say as of how they are going 
to say it, what they write is fairly certain to lose 
something of the freshness which springs from uncon- 
sciousness. No one can be expected to speak with ease 
when before his mind looms constantly the prospect 
of possible criticism of the words and constructions he 
has employed. If grammar, or what he considers 
grammar, prevents him from resorting to usages to 
which he sees no objection, it has in one way been 
harmful if in another way it has been helpful. Cor- 
rectness may have been secured, but spontaneity is 
gone. The rules laid down for the writer's guidance 
may be desirable, but they are likewise depressing. 
He thinks of himself as under the charge of a paternal 
government, and he is not happy; for our race, in its 



64 THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY 

linguistic as well as in its political activity, bears with 
impatience the sense of feeling itself governed. 

Such a result would be sure to follow, were gram- 
mars and manuals of usage absolutely trustworthy. 
But no such statement can be made of most of them, 
if, indeed, of any. It is an unfortunate fact that since 
the middle of the eighteenth century, when works of 
this nature first began to be much in evidence and to 
exert distinct influence, far the larger proportion of 
them have been produced by men who had little 
acquaintance with the practice of the best writers and 
even less with the history and development of gram- 
matical forms and constructions. Their lack of this 
knowledge led them frequently to put in its place asser- 
tions based not upon what usage really is, but upon 
what in their opinion it ought to be. They evolved or 
adopted artificial rules for the government of expres- 
sion. By these they tested the correctness of whatever 
was written. They were thereby enabled to proclaim 
their own superiority to the great authors of our speech 
by pointing out the numerous violations of this as- 
sumed propriety into which these had been unhappily 
betrayed. As the rules they proclaimed were copied 
and repeated by others, a fictitious standard of usage 
was set up in numerous instances and is largely re- 
sponsible for many of the current misconceptions 
which now prevail as to what is grammatical. 

It is the belief in this fictitious standard which is 
responsible not merely for numerous misstatements 
about the correctness of particular phrases and con- 
structions, but for the frequent failure to comprehend 
the nature of prevailing linguistic conditions. One of 
the latter requires special mention here. It is no in- 



THE STANDARD OF USAGE 65 

frequent remark that in these later days there exists 
a distinct tendency towards lawlessness in usage, a 
distinct indisposition to defer to authority. We are 
told that the language of the man in the street is held 
up as the all-sufficient standard. If this statement were 
ever true, it was never less true than now. There 
might have been apparent justification for an asser- 
tion of this sort in the great creative Elizabethan 
period. Then no restraints upon expression seem to 
have been recognized outside of the taste or knowledge 
of the writer. As a consequence, the loosest language 
of conversation was reproduced with fidelity in the 
speech of the drama, then the principal national litera- 
ture. But nothing of this freedom is found now. A 
constant supervision over speech is exercised by ama- 
teur champions of propriety. These are ensconced at 
every fireside. In colleges and academies and high 
schools they constitute an army of assumed experts, 
who are regularly engaged in holding in check any 
attempt to indulge in real or supposed lawlessness. 

It is not, therefore, from the quarter of license that 
any danger to our speech arises. If peril exist at all, 
it comes from the ignorant formalism and affected pre- 
cision which wage perpetual war with the ancient 
idioms of our tongue, or array themselves in hostility 
to its natural development. That this, so far as it is 
effective, is a positive injury to the language was 
pointed out several years ago by a scholar who, in con- 
sequence of the study he had given to the usage of 
the great writers, was enabled to speak on this subject 
with an authority to which few have attained. He 
was discussing the remarks of certain critics who had 
professed to consider as inaccurate and ungrammatical 



66 THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY 

the preterite wended in the locution, " he wended his 
way." " It is by such lessons as these," he continued, 
" that the unreflecting and uninquiring are misled into 
eschewing, as if they were wrong, words and phrases 
which are perfectly right." If there is any revolt 
against the authority of such guides, equally blind and 
presumptuous, if there is any lack of deference to the 
rules they seek to impose, it is a condition of things 
to be welcomed and not to be deplored. 

Obviously it is idle to discuss questions of usage 
unless some general principles can be established in 
accordance with which the correctness or incorrectness 
of particular expressions can be tested. If these do 
not exist, or if they cannot be ascertained, opinion as 
to the propriety of particular words or grammatical 
constructions will necessarily vary with the tastes or 
prejudices of the writer or speaker. If this be not 
supported by adequate knowledge, it will ordinarily be 
little more than the expression of personal feeling. A 
particular individual dislikes a particular word or 
phrase. That is one of the best of reasons why he 
should not employ it himself ; it is not a very cogent 
reason for inducing others to follow his example. 
There are, of course, many offences against good usage 
that cultivated men everywhere will condemn without 
hesitation. These, however, are not the ones that 
cause embarrassment. Every writer is constantly con- 
fronted with the denunciation of words and locutions 
which he not only hears in the speech of those he meets 
daily, but finds employed in the works of men regarded 
by all as authorities. If he himself has made no 
study of the usage thus condemned, if he recognizes 
that he is not in a position to decide the matter for 



THE STANDARD OF USAGE 67 

himself — and few men have either the leisure or the 
opportunity to gain the special knowledge requisite 
for that purpose — it is inevitable that he should be left 
in a state of perplexity and consequent indecision. 

Assertions as to what is proper or improper in speech 
are now, indeed, encountered everywhere. They 
naturally form a constituent part of grammars. They 
furnish the sole contents of some manuals. They turn 
up in most unexpected places in books and periodicals 
of every sort. It is a subject upon which every one 
feels himself competent to lay down the law. It has 
now become practically impossible for any writer so 
to express himself that he shall not run foul of the con- 
victions of some person who has fixed upon the 
employment of a particular word or construction as 
his test of correctness of usage. Should any person 
seriously set out to observe every one of the various 
and varying utterances put forth for his guidance by 
all the members of this volunteer army of guardians 
of the speech, he would in process of time find himself 
without any language to use whatever. Just as, in 
the Old Curiosity Shop, Dick Swiveller's approaches 
to the Strand were cut off in succession by the creation 
of new creditors in different streets, so the writer's 
avenues to expression would be closed one by one, and 
he would finally be compelled to resort to the most 
tortuous and roundabout devices to convey the simplest 
meaning. 

Can, therefore, any general principles be found 
which will put us in a position to reach in any given 
case conclusions independent of our personal preju- 
dices or prepossessions? One there certainly is 
which, until lately at least, has been always accepted 



68 THOMAS R. LOU NS BURY 

without question. In the form in which it is familiar 
to us it was stated about two thousand years ago by 
Horace in his treatise on the Poetic Art. There he 
tells us that words which are now disused shall be 
revived ; and words which are now held in honor shall 
disappear. Then he adds the remark which has 
become almost a commonplace : 

" Si volet usus, 
Quern penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi." 

Usage, therefore, according to the dictum of Horace, 
is the deciding authority, the binding law, the rightful 
rule of speech. 

But a further question at once arises. Usage, it 
may be conceded, is the standard of speech. But whose 
usage? Certainly not the usage of this man or that 
man indifferently. Horace, in laying down his dictum, 
could not have been thinking of the general body of 
his fellow-countrymen. These spoke the Latin of the 
camps and the market-place. Much of what they said 
would have sounded to his ears as barbarous ; some of 
it would in all probability have been absolutely unin- 
telligible. But if he did not mean these, of whom was 
he speaking? The answer is so evident that hardly 
anything can be more surprising than the doubt which 
has been entertained and expressed of its exact nature. 
Clearly, what Horace had in mind was the usage of 
the best speakers and writers. It was that, and that 
only, which in his eyes constituted the standard of 
propriety. The acceptance by such men of a new 
word or locution, no matter from what source coming, 
gave it established currency; their employment of a 
grammatical form gave it the stamp of authority. The 



THE STANDARD OF USAGE 69 

usus of Horace was, in consequence, precisely the same 
as that which Quintihan called later the consensus 
eriiditorum — the agreement of the cultivated. Good 
usage, in short, is the usage of the intellectually good. 
The same thought is brought out strongly by Ben 
Jonson in his observations upon style, though his words 
are little more than a literal translation from the Latin 
author last named. " Custom," said he, " is the most 
certain mistress of language, as the public stamp 
makes the current money." But, like Quintihan, he 
was careful to define what he meant by this supreme 
authority. " When I name custom," he added, " I 
understand not the vulgar custom ; for that were a pre- 
cept no less dangerous to language than life, if we 
should speak or live after the manners of the vulgar ; 
but that I call custom of speech, which is the consent 
of the learned ; as custom of life, which is the consent 
of the good." 1 

The dictum of Horace, indeed, has hardly been 
called in question for most of the two thousand years 
which have elapsed since its utterance. But of late 
attempts have occasionally been made to dispute its 
correctness. Many of these have come from those 
who evidently did not comprehend what the poet meant 
by usus. They have, consequently, imputed to Horace 
something which Horace never had in mind. They 
have attributed to him the promulgation of the error 
just indicated — that is, that anything is good usage 
which is sanctioned by the usage of the large majority 
of speakers and writers, independent of the character 
of the individuals who make up that majority. But 
denials there have been of his assertion by certain per- 

1 Ben Jonson, Discoveries, De orationis dignitate. 



70 THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY 

sons to whom it is hardly possible to attribute this lack 
of perception. These have been put forth in books 
which in some cases still continue to have a fairly re- 
spectable sale. The remarks made by the writers of 
these works show, however, that it is much easier, as 
it is altogether more common, to content one's self 
with a general denial of the truth of the poet's declara- 
tion than to find any substitute to take its place. 
Authority there surely must be somewhere. Did it 
not exist, there would be a reign of license in which 
each man, no matter how incompetent, would be a law 
unto himself. If usage, therefore, is not the standard 
of speech, it is reasonable to ask. What is? If the best 
speakers and writers are not guides, to what quarter 
can we repair in cases of doubt or difficulty? 

Several answers or rather attempted answers have 
been made to this question. Let us take up the con- 
sideration of the two most loudly trumpeted substi- 
tutes which are to furnish us a higher law for propriety 
of speech than can be found in good usage. The first 
of these, we are told, consists in the principles of uni- 
versal grammar. In them is lodged the supreme 
authority. What are these principles of universal 
grammar, it is natural to ask. They can hardly be any- 
thing else than rules based upon practices which all 
languages agree in observing. But if there be such, 
we come back for their establishment to the usage of 
those who speak these various tongues. Consequently, 
whenever in them usage differs, as in many instances 
it does, we must either deny in a given case the general 
applicability of the particular principle, or insist upon 
deciding the grammatical propriety of the practice of 
one tongue or of one set of tongues by the practice 



THE STANDARD OF USAGE 71 

of an alien or of alien tongues. To put this matter in 
as clear a light as possible, let us consider an illustra- 
tion furnished by one of the most ardent upholders of 
universal grammar as the final arbiter, " No amount 
of wisdom," says he, " can excuse the use of a really 
singular noun with a plural verb, or the reverse." 

This has certainly a reasonable look. If any 
example can be adduced which will justify the estab- 
lishment of this theoretical standard of propriety, none 
is likely to be found more satisfactory than the one just 
given. But at once there arises the thought that in 
the Greek language — by many deemed the most per- 
fect instrument of expression that mankind has ever 
known — the plural nominative of the neuter noun 
had pretty generally its verb in the singular. How 
does the advocate of the law higher than usage meet 
this violation of his principles of universal grammar? 
He does not meet it ; he calmly evades it. He assures 
us that the Greek neuter plural may be looked upon as 
a collective. But if this be so, it must be because 
usage has come to deem it as such ; for it cannot be 
so in the nature of things. Furthermore, if the privi- 
lege of thus regarding it be conceded to the Greek, it 
must also be conceded to the English or to any other 
tongue, if its users prefer to look upon it in such a 
light. The imputed authority of universal grammar 
consequently breaks down in its chosen illustration. 
Nor are we here at the end of our difficulties in the 
very example under discussion. In modern Greek the 
construction in question no longer exists. Even in an- 
cient Greek it occurs much less frequently in the Epic 
dialect than in the Attic. What, then, are we to think 
of these vaunted principles of universal grammar 



-^2 THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY 

which allow a construction to be proper at one period 
or in one speech, and at another period or in another 
speech declare it to be improper? As a matter of fact, 
it will be found that in every instance selected to illus- 
trate the impossibility of usage overriding grammar, it 
is usage that has to be evoked in order to justify the 
apparent violation of grammar which has taken place. 

Still another standard has been set up which has 
the distinction of being much more confidently pro- 
claimed than clearly defined. Here are the words 
of one of its promulgators. " The truth is," says 
Richard Grant White, " that the authority of general 
usage, or even of the usage of great writers, is not 
absolute in language. There is a misuse of words 
which can be justified by no authority, however great, 
by no usage, however general." ^ There is nothing at 
all new about this assertion. It is the one which has 
been regularly made for the last hundred and fifty 
years by every person who finds that locutions to 
which he takes exception occur in the writings of those 
whose literary superiority is everywhere recognized. 
Like his predecessors the utterer of this dictum did 
not make any definite announcement of the standard 
which was to take its place. As near, however, as can 
be gathered from various passages in his writings, the 
guide he had in mind was reason. Under its benign 
direction, we are told that " rude, clumsy, and insuf- 
ficiently worked-out forms of speech, sometimes mis- 
takenly honored under the name of idioms," tend more 
and more to disappear.^ 

Unfortunately for the guide here designated, reason 

1 Words and Their Uses, p. 24. 

2 Ibid., p. 23. 



THE STANDARD OF USAGE 73 

in the intellectual world is very much like conscience 
in the moral ; the same fact will lead two men to draw 
exactly opposite conclusions. The dictates of each 
ought, of course, to be obeyed by the individual ; it is 
quite another thing to seek to imi)ose them upon the 
conduct of others. In morals an unenlightened con- 
science often induces its owner to condemn the acts of 
those far better than himself. Worse than that, it 
sometimes leads him to commit acts in themselves 
essentially wicked. It is exactly the same in the matter 
of language. An unenlightened reason constantly 
leads men to condemn words and constructions used 
by those far superior to them in knowledge and taste 
and ability. But even where ignorance does not pre- 
vail, any so-called standard, such as reason, fails us 
when it is most needed. Two persons, each of a high 
degree of intelligence, are often found disagreeing as 
to the propriety of employing particular words or con- 
structions. Their knowledge may be the same ; it is 
their judgments which vary. In the conflict between 
the reasoning powers of two equally cultivated men 
who is to decide? The only way that can properly be 
taken — it may be added, it is the only way that ever 
is taken — to settle the dispute is by an appeal to 
authority. That, of course, is nothing more than the 
reason of the best speakers and writers exhibited in 
their practice. Here once again we come back to 
usage, as the standard of speech. It invariably turns 
up as the final court of appeal. Whatever road we set 
out to take, we find ourselves travelling in this one 
at last. 

The truth is, were everything known about good 
usage with the positiveness with which assertions about 



74 THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY 

it are made, the constant controversies which arise in 
regard to it would be a simple impossibility. In dis- 
cussions of it, what is called reason is often only 
another name for ignorance. The " insufficiently 
worked-out forms of speech, sometimes mistakenly 
honored under the name of idioms," prove to be in- 
sufficiently understood forms of speech which the 
verbal critic condemns because he knows nothing of 
their nature and history. In consequence there has 
never really been the slightest ground for disputing the 
dictum of Horace when rightly understood. It em- 
bodies nothing more than the result of universal 
experience. There are modifications, or, rather, 
explanations, to which it is subject; but its general 
truth cannot be successfully questioned. The standard 
of speech is therefore the usage of the cultivated. 
Such men are the absolute dictators of language. They 
are the lawgivers whose edicts it is the duty of the 
grammarian to record. What they agree upon is cor- 
rect; what they shun it is expedient to shun, even if 
not wrong in itself to employ. Words coined by those 
outside of the class to which these men belong do not 
pass into the language as a constituent part of it until 
sanctioned by their approbation and use. Their 
authority, both as regards the reception or rejection 
of locutions of any sort, is final. It hardly needs to 
be said that " the man in the street " is not only no dic- 
tator of usage, but that he has no direct influence upon 
the preservation of the life of any word or phrase. 
This depends entirely upon its adoption by great 
writers. If these fail to accept a new locution, it is 
certain to die eventually and as a general rule very 
speedily. On the other hand, the purist is as little a 



THE STANDARD OF USAGE 75 

final authority. He may protest against the employ- 
ment by famous authors of certain words or construc- 
tions. He may declare these opposed to reason, con- 
trary to the analogies of the language, or tending to 
destroy distinctions which should be maintained. If 
they heed his remonstrances, well and good. H they 
disregard them, he mistakes his position when he pre- 
tends to sit in judgment upon the decisions of his 
masters. 

The establishment of this dictum, with the limita- 
tion of its meaning, leads directly to another conclu- 
sion. Good usage is not something to be evolved from 
one's own consciousness, or to be deduced by some 
process of reasoning; it is something to be ascertained. 
It must be learned just as language itself is learned. 
Furthermore, there is no short-cut to its acquisition. 
Grammars may in some instances help us ; in some 
instances they do help us, but in others they some- 
times do just the reverse. But in no case can they 
ever be appealed to as final authorities. There is one 
way and but one way of attaining to the end desired 
as a theoretical accomplishment, and fortunately it is 
a course open to every one. Knowledge of good usage 
can be acquired only by associating in life with the 
best speakers or in literature with the best writers. 
The latter resource is always available. It is the 
practice and consent of the great authors that deter- 
mine correctness of speech. The pages of these are 
accessible to all. If they differ among themselves 
about details, choice is allowable until a general agree- 
ment settles in course of time upon one mode of 
expression as preferable to another or to any others 
proposed. 



76 THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY 

So much for the general principle. But there is a 
still further limitation of the sense of Horace's dic- 
tum. When we say that usage is the standard of 
speech, we mean not merely good usage, but present 
good usage. Neither the grammar nor the vocabulary 
of one age is precisely the grammar or vocabulary 
of another. The language of a later period may not 
vary much from the language of an earlier one, but 
it will vary somewhat. It is not necessarily better or 
worse ; it is simply different. The fact that the good 
usage of one generation may be distinctly improper 
usage in a generation which follows is frequently 
exemplified in the meanings given to individual words, 
and sometimes in the words themselves. This we all 
accept as a matter of course. But the same state- 
ment can be made just as truly of grammatical forms 
and constructions. In the case of these the variations 
between different periods do not impress themselves so 
much upon our attention because they are compara- 
tively few. Still they occur. Ignorance of this fact 
or indifference to it has often led to the denunciation 
of the writers of the past as being guilty of solecisms 
or barbarisms, when they have done nothing more 
than conform to the usage of their own time. If such 
criticism be accepted as just, we in turn shall be left 
at the mercy of our descendants. We shall be re- 
proached for employing words in senses they do not 
approve, or for resorting to forms and constructions 
which they have ceased to look upon as correct. If 
we recognize that whatever is in usage is right, we 
must be prepared to go a step further and concede 
that whatever was was right. 



VII 

The New Epoch 

By George S. Morison ^ 

Students of primitive society have divided the early 
development of the human race into ethnical epochs, 
representing various conditions of savagery and bar- 
barism, and finally culminating in civilization ; they 
recognize three periods of savagery, followed by three 
periods of barbarism. In the lowest epoch men were 

1 This essay and the two following are taken from G. S. Morison's 
book. The New Epoch as Developed by the Manufacture of Power, 
published by Houghton Mifflin in 1903, in which they form Chapters I, 
V, and VI, respectively. They are printed here with the generous 
permission of Mr. Robert S. Morison, the owner of the copyright. 
The New Epoch is a widely read and widely quoted discussion of the 
profession of engineering in its relations to present-day problems of 
business, government, and education. Every thoughtful student of en- 
gineering should read it entire. The title of this chapter in Mr. 
Morison's volume is " General Conditions." That has been changed 
here to " The New Epoch " (a title which Mr. Morison used twice for 
this material when presented in lecture form) as being more accurately 
descriptive of the contents when printed as a separate essay. 

George S. Morison, 1842-1903, was educated at Harvard; he was 
admitted to the bar in New York in 1866 and engaged for one year 
in the practice of law. He then deserted law for engineering and be- 
came one of the leaders of the profession. He was chief engineer of 
the bridge across the Ohio at Cairo, Illinois, and for the one across 
the Mississippi at Memphis, Tennessee; he built during his life four 
other bridges across the Mississippi and ten across the Missouri river. 
He served on various important engineering boards, was a member of the 
Isthmian Canal Commission 1899-1901, was President of the American 
Society of Civil Engineers in 1895, and was a Fellow of the American 
Academy of Arts and Sciences. In addition to The New Epoch, he was 
the author of many books and papers on engineering subjects. — Editor. 

77 



78 GEORGE S. MORISON 

little superior to the animals by which they were sur- 
rounded. With the use of fire the second period began. 
With the invention of the bow and arrow, the most 
primitive form of projectile, man entered the third 
period. With pottery, and all that it implies, he passed 
from savagery to barbarism. The next advance came 
with the domestication of animals, which gave man 
another power besides his own physical strength. 
With the manufacture of iron the last of the bar- 
barous periods was entered. By the invention of the 
written alphabet the primitive race was promoted from 
barbarism to civilization. 

The use of fire first placed man in a condition very 
different from that of other animals, giving him a 
power the uses of which are even yet not fully devel- 
oped. The domestication of animals was hardly less 
important, and although where animals suitable for 
domestication did not exist tribes were able to pass 
this period without them, their weakness was apparent 
when they came in contact with other races whose 
conditions were not so limited. Finally the invention 
of a written language made the work of one genera- 
tion available for its successors and produced historical 
civilization. 

The changes which mark the advances from period 
to period are all material improvements ; in every 
instance they are characterized by some distinctive 
physical device which has enabled man either to utilize 
his own strength better than before, or to increase his 
power by adding other animate or inanimate force. 
The race that passed from one period to another 
acquired resources which it had not before ; in the 
contests which characterized the life of the primitive 



THE NEW EPOCH 79 

man, the men of a lower period fell before those who 
had risen higher. But though the devices were of a 
purely material character, they gave opportunities for 
mental and moral improvement which alone made 
further advance possible, till finally the written alphabet 
resulted in that preservation of knowledge which has 
made the intellectual efforts of thirty centuries avail- 
able for ourselves. With the dawn of civilization the 
ethnical periods have been considered closed; subse- 
quent growth has been the natural advance of civiliza- 
tion marked by the events which make v\^ritten history. 

But there is no reason why the epoch which began 
with writing should be the last. It only needed a new 
capacity, radically unlike those which have gone before, 
to make an epoch in civilization as distinct as those in 
primitive society. Such new capacity has now been 
found ; another epoch has begun. Fire, animal strength, 
and written language have in turn advanced men and 
nations ; something like a new capacity was developed 
with the discovery of explosives and again in the inven- 
tion of printing; but the capacity of man has always 
been limited to his own individual strength and that 
of the men and animals which he could control. His 
capacity is no longer so limited ; man has now learned 
to manufacture power, and with the manufacture of 
power a new epoch began. These words are used 
advisedly; creation, whether of substance or force, is 
not given to man; manufacture is not creation, but to 
change inert matter from one form to another in such 
way as to generate power is to manufacture power, and 
this we can do. 

Furthermore, not only does the manufacture of 
power mark a new epoch in development, but the 



8o GEORGE S. MORISON 

change is greater than any which preceded it; greater 
in its influence on the world; greater in the results 
which are to come. 

The manufacture of power means that wherever 
needed we can now produce practically unlimited 
power; whatever the measure of a single machine, that 
machine can be used to make a greater one ; we are no 
longer limited by animal units, confined by locations of 
waterfalls, nor angered by the uncertain power of 
wind. Power can be had where it is needed and when 
it is needed. The power generated in a modern steam- 
ship in a single voyage across the Atlantic is more than 
enough to raise from the Nile and set in place every 
stone of the great Egyptian pyramid. 

The new epoch differs from all preceding epochs, 
in that while they represented successive periods of 
progress, different races have existed simultaneously 
in every period of advancement, whereas the new 
epoch must from its very nature soon become uni- 
versal. The manufacture of power has given us the 
means of traversing the entire globe with a regularity 
and speed which brings all races together, and which 
must in time remove all differences in capacity. It 
brings people of all races into contact, and, by extend- 
ing knowledge, ends the superstitions and mysteries 
which have had such influence in the past. It enables 
man while working in unhealthy districts to spend a 
portion of his time in places favorable to physical 
health and bodily vigor, and so may end the climatic 
degeneration of race, which has done so much in his- 
tory. It is gradually breaking down national divisions, 
substituting the natural boundaries of convenient gov- 
ernment for boundaries based on race and ignorance. 



THE NEW EPOCH 8i 

It will finally make the human race a single great 
whole, working intelligently in ways and for ends 
which we cannot yet understand. 

It is not too much to predict that when the full 
effects of the manufacture of power are realized and 
the world has passed through the development which 
the next ten centuries will see, that the time when man 
began to manufacture power will be recognized as the 
division between the ancient and the modern, between 
ignorance and intelligence, between the national strife 
which may then be classed as barbarism and the new 
civilization, whatever that may then be called. 

The new epoch has barely begun. No exact dates 
can be fixed. Epoch making is not a matter of a single 
invention ; it is the general result which follows. It 
was not the manufacture of the first earthen pot, 
but the general introduction of pottery which car- 
ried a prehistoric race from savagery to barbarism. 
It was not the invention of a few letters, but the gen- 
eral use of a written language which took the bar- 
barian into civilization. It was not the invention of 
the first steam engine, but the general control of the 
manufacture of power which is now taking mankind 
into the new civilization. James Watt developed his first 
steam engine in 1769. The steam engine began to come 
into general use about the beginning of this century. 
The nineteenth century has seen the development of 
the manufacture of power by steam. The steam engine 
is still almost the sole representative of manufactured 
power, but there is no reason why this should continue. 
Electricity as a conveyor of power has been developed 
to an extent which may almost be classed with manu- 
factured power. New forms of manufactured power 



82 GEORGE S. MORISON 

may come at any time, but the introduction of new 
forms is a comparatively unimportant thing. The great 
advance came with .the abihty to manufacture power 
at all; the method is a secondary thing. 

It is easy to understand that when the new epoch 
is fully developed all physical work may be dependent 
on inanimate power. It is easy to see that this means" 
the concentration of enormous masses of power where 
power never could be had before ; that it means the 
subdivision of power into units of a minuteness hard 
to conceive; that it means the unraveling of mysteries 
which have never been solved; that it means the con- 
struction of works of a magnitude before which the 
greatest monuments of antiquity become insignificant. 
The fighting ship of to-day is a floating machine-shop, 
though its crew of mechanics are confined as com- 
pletely as the chained rowers of a Roman galley. The 
battles of the future will not be fought by men or by 
horses ; the camels of the desert will never again con- 
front the elephants of the jungle ; fortifications will 
be factories filled with power. It is easy to recognize 
that the discoveries already made may be slight in 
comparison with those which are to come. All this is 
a matter of physical possibility ; it is interesting to 
speculate upon; it is foolish to prophesy about; these 
achievements are too close at hand for us to waste 
time in guessing what they will be. 

The substitution of inanimate manufactured power 
for the animal power on which our race was formerly 
dependent means a separation of the force which does 
the work from the intellect which directs it. The 
power which we make and use is absolutely without 
sense; all this must come from the human mind. 



THE NEW EPOCH 83 

The man who drives a horse has Httle to do ; the horse 
finds the way and does the work. But the driver 
of a motor carriage has a senseless machine, and all 
direction must come from him. Manufactured power 
demands intelligence to supply the sense which the 
power lacks. The extreme logical development would 
be a condition where every kind of physical work is 
performed by machines, while human effort is reduced 
to design and care. Such a result will never be reached. 
So long as men have bodies, the forces placed in those 
bodies must be used, but the substitution of manu- 
factured power for human labor is a promotion for 
man, whose value becomes measured by skill in direct- 
ing power and not by muscular strength. 

No changes have ever equaled those through which 
the world is passing now. The manufacture of power 
has an intellectual as well as a physical effect ; it has 
separated power from the mind which must manage 
it ; it calls for intelligent design and direction of the 
multitude of works which it has rendered possible ; 
it has equipped our generation with tools for study 
and investigation as well as for mechanical work. The 
new epoch will alter the relations between the pro- 
fessions, business, and trades; it will readjust the 
duties of government and the relations of one govern- 
ment to another ; it will change our system of educa- 
tion. These changes will be considered in relation to 
business, to national interests, and to education. The 
larger subject of government and international rela- 
tions can only be touched upon briefly, but the effect 
of the new epoch is very important, and its influence 
in shaping the duties of government must not be over- 
looked. The group of new professions which are now 



84 GEORGE S. MORISON . 

coming into life will be reviewed and their proper 
influence on work outside of professional lines ex- 
plored. The general demands of education in the 
new epoch will be considered, and some suggestions 
will be made as to the best methods of meeting these 
demands. 



VIII 

The Profession of Engineering 

By George S. Morison ^ 

The new epoch has opened an entirely new set of 
professions. The old professions were primarily di- 
vided into two classes, the military and the civil, and 
of the latter only three were recognized, — divinity, 
law, and medicine. These three were called liberal pro- 
fessions, and their members were supposed to be, and 
generally were, better educated, though not always more 
thoroughly trained, than the men who followed other 
callings. The demands of the new epoch are such 
that educated men are required everywhere. They are 
needed to design the tools by which power is manufac- 
tured and is utilized ; they are needed to manage the 
afifairs of the corporations whose capital is invested in 

1 The title of this chapter in Mr. Morison's book is " Civil Engineer- 
ing " and throughout the chapter Mr. Morison speaks of engineering in 
general as Civil Engineering, taking his title from the old distinction 
between Civil engineers on the one hand and Military on the other, a 
distinction which puts all engineers whose work is not strictly military — 
civil, mechanical, electrical, chemical, mining, and sanitary — under the 
one head of Civil Engineers. Whatever historical warrant this nomen- 
clature may have it is not the usage of the profession today, and I have 
taken the liberty — on the advice of several professors of civil engi- 
neering — of silently deleting the word "civil" from the text wherever 
Mr. Morison, in speaking of " civil engineering," evidently means engi- 
neering in general. This is done, it need hardly be said, not with the 
object of warping Mr. Morison's meaning, but rather of making his 
meaning clearer to engineering students. — Editor. 

85 



86 GEORGE S. MORISON 

the great variety of tools, and which have been re- 
ferred to; they are needed to perform the increased 
duties which governments are now assuming. 

Seventy years ago engineering was defined as the art 
of directing the great sources of power in nature for 
the use and convenience of man.^ This definition was 
embodied in the charter of the institution which has 
done more than any other to unite the profession and 
to give it the standing it is now attaining. It was made 
in the very infancy of the new epoch, within sixty 
years of the time when Watt developed his first steam 
engine. . , . The definition was followed by a list 
of objects and applications, but it was expressly stated 
that its real extent was limited only by the progress 
of science, and that its scope and utility would be 
increased with every discovery, and its resources with 
every invention, since its bounds were unlimited, as 
must also be the researches of its professors. This 
definition is broad enough to embrace every department 
of work which undertakes the development and use 
of any of those physical powers through which the 
new epoch is now subjecting all varieties of matter 
to the dominion of mind. 

The constitution of the American Society of Civil 
Engineers fixes as a requirement for full membership 
" the ability to design as well as direct engineering 
works." The English definition and the American re- 
quirement taken together explain what constitutes an 
engineer. His business is to design the works by 
which the great sources of power in nature are di- 
rected. His works are not built for themselves nor as 

1 Thomas Tredgold, 1828; subsequently embodied in charter of the In- 
stitution of Civil Engineers. 



THE PROFESSION OF ENGINEERING 87 

commemorative monuments; they are made to direct 
the powers of nature for the use of man. Every engi- 
neering work is built for a special ulterior end ; it is 
a tool to accomplish some specific purpose. Engine 
is but another name for tool. The business of an 
engineer relates to tools. An engineer must be capable 
of designing as well as handling tools. The highest 
development of a tool is an engine which manufactures 
power. All the great possibilities of this profession 
come from the existence of such tools. 

The engineer of the new epoch, the epoch which he 
is bringing into existence by the manufacture of power, 
must be an educated man. In no profession will this 
be more necessary. The physical laws of power and 
strength are mathematically exact and admit of no 
trifling. As the epoch progresses the requirements for 
each individual will become more complicated. The 
theologian and the metaphysician may claim that an 
education based on the laws of matter leaves out the 
highest part of existence; the biologist and the physi- 
cian may claim that matter endowed with life is a 
higher organism than the inanimate matter with which 
the engineer has to deal. But however true these 
claims, their laws have not the mathematical rigidity, 
the clear definition, and the thorough discipline which 
mark the laws with which our profession works. The 
engineer cannot shield himself under doctrines or 
theories which he accepts but cannot understand. 
Dealing with accurate, definite laws and guided by the 
corrective touch of physical nature, the education of 
the engineer will become more necessary, more thor- 
ough, and more exact than that of any other profes- 



88 GEORGE S. MORISON 

sional man. This is the training which the engineer of 
the new epoch must have. This knowledge he must 
have, or he must be classed as a workman rather than 
a professional man. 

The engineer of the new epoch must sink the indi- 
vidual in the profession. The engineering work of the 
future must be better work than has ever yet been 
done. The best work is never done by separate men. 
It is only accomplished when professional knowledge 
so permeates all members of a profession that the work 
of one is virtually the work of all. The first steps are 
made by , individuals, but the best results come later. 
In the Middle Ages Gothic cathedrals were built 
throughout northern Europe. They are exquisite 
works ; no modern architect can approach their beauty. 
The reason is that the men who built the Gothic 
cathedrals worked together as members of a guild 
which was thoroughly imbued with the spirit of build- 
ing these churches. In no period of the world's history 
has marine construction had any significance compared 
with what it has to-day, and it is because the great ship- 
builders are working together, each having the practical 
benefit of what they all are doing. They are working 
together as members of a profession rather than as 
individuals, and their work is becoming more uniform 
and more perfect. 

The engineer of the new epoch must be a specialist. 
No man can learn to design all the tools by which the 
powers in nature are to be directed. The work is too 
great for one man to master. The best results will 
only be obtained by concentrating efifort in a single 
line. But though the engineer must be a specialist, 
his specialty must not be of a narrow kind; he must 



THE PROFESSION OF ENGINEERING 89 

have that general knowledge and training which make 
the liberally educated man. In every occupation a 
natural selection of men takes place ; some follow the 
close lines of the work for which they are trained, 
while to others this training is but an incident in the 
early part of their careers, and does little more than 
point the general direction of their lives. The ability 
to deal with men and to direct the minds of men is 
a matter of natural gift more than of education. It 
is so important that when possessed in a high degree, 
all other accomplishments yield to it ; and its possessor, 
realizing that the ability to use several minds gives 
him the same advantage among his fellows that the 
control of additional power has given among races, 
will use his capacity. But the positive training of an 
education has its value for men whose paths of life 
may lie far from the special work for which they were 
trained ; it will at least teach them the importance of 
accurate knowledge. Too many men are contented to 
guess rather than to know, relying on personal tact to 
relieve themselves from difficulties when their guesses 
are wrong. 

The engineer of the new epoch must fill many posi- 
tions which are now held by men of different training. 
The knowledge of the tools, both large and small, 
which men are using, must be the strongest qualifica- 
tion for their use. Accurate engineering knowledge 
must succeed commercial guesses. Corporations, both 
pubhc and private, must be handled as if they were 
machines, and the men who will so handle them will 
find their best training in the education which will make 
the best engineers. These managers may not be called 
engineers, but engineering should not find fault with 



90 GEORGE S. MORISON 

titles ; the man whose training has fitted him to do the 
work of an engineer will not cease to be one if he is 
promoted to a high position of management. 

When ability to rule meant ability to defend against 
invasion, to maintain war against foreign enemies, 
government was in the hands of soldiers. As society 
became more complicated, and a permanent admin- 
istration of civil matters more necessary, domestic 
affairs being more important than foreign, the admin- 
istration passed largely into the hands of lawyers. The 
legal profession was long the only educated profession 
whose members were available for public work. The 
functions of government are changing. The demands 
of the new epoch are not like those of the past. Safety 
from foreign invasion is needed less than safety from 
dangers which lurk within, — from the poisons, both 
moral and physical, which endanger concentrated popu- 
lation ; from bad air, bad water, and bad construction ; 
from corrupt administration, and from bacteria. The 
rulers and governors, who at first were soldiers, who 
subsequently were selected from men trained as law- 
yers, must in the future be taken, at least in part, from 
those who are educated in the utilization of the powers 
in nature, — from engineers and the men who are 
equipped with the new education for the benefit of 
their country. The duties of municipal government, 
or the government which is most closely concerned 
with local affairs, must become very much like the 
management of corporations. In fact, a municipality 
is a public corporation rather than a government, and 
its duties should be performed in the same way as 
those of a corporation. The same class of men will 
do the best work for a city that will make the best 



THE PROFESSION OF ENGINEERING 91 

managers of manufacturing corporations. In cities and 
in many communities the duties of the government rest 
more on good engineering than on legal skill. The 
whole life of the community depends on appliances and 
conveniences which the manufacture of power alone 
has made possible. For all this work the government 
needs neither soldiers nor lawyers, but men educated in 
the various departments which come within the broad 
definition of the work of the engineer. 

The tools which engineers have to build are generally 
large. The physical man is often a tiny thing beside 
the work which he has to construct. Nothing better 
illustrates the power of mind over matter than the 
work of this profession. Though it deals with matter 
and its work is of a material kind, it is the mind which 
has made this matter give forth power ; it is the mind 
which is opening the new epoch, and it is by the training 
of this mind that the engineer must prevail. He is the 
priest of material development, of the work which en- 
ables other men to enjoy the fruits of the great sources 
of power in nature, and of the power of mind over 
matter. He is the priest of the new epoch, a priest 
without superstitions. But if this profession is to do 
the good work of which it is capable, the true spirit 
of individual immolation which has characterized the 
devoted priest of all ages must be found among its 
members. The' profession can only do its future work 
by trained minds working together. 



IX 

Engineering Education 

By George S. Morison ^ 

Great as is the effect which the developments of 
the new epoch are having on the engineering profes- 
sion, their influence on education is equally important. 
The duties of universities are being entirely changed. 
Great changes impose new duties on the institutions 
which are charged with the intellectual development of 
the community. No changes have ever equaled those 
through which the world is passing now. No institu- 
tion has greater responsibilities at this time of change 
than those which rest on a university. The manufac- 
ture of power has an intellectual as well as a physical 
effect; it has separated power from the mind which 
must manage it ; it calls for intelligent design and direc- 
tion of the multitude of works which it has rendered 
possible ; it has equipped our generation with tools for 
study and investigation as well as for mechanical 
work. 

A university is more than a school ; it is not merely 
a college ; still less should it be an eleemosynary institu- 
tion for the benefit of young men to whom it can give 

1 This is the sixth chapter of Mr. Morison's book (see Note to Essay 
VII) and is there called " The University." The excuse for changing 
the title for the purposes of this collection is as before to make the 
heading a more accurate description of the contents of the essay. 

92 



ENGINEERING EDUCATION 93 

an education. A university owes its duty to the com- 
munity as a whole, not to individuals who live in that 
community. The endowment which a university may 
receive, whether it come from public appropriation or 
from private gift, must come to it as to a public bene- 
factor, endowed and sustained in order that the whole 
community may have the benefit of its intellectual 
guidance. It must not train young men because those 
young men wish to be scholars, but because trained 
scholars are necessary for the good of the community. 
The individual must be sunk in the nation or state of 
which he is a part ; the young men whom the university 
educates should know that they are educated to be 
useful members of a community, and not for their 
own ends. The real duties of a university are uni- 
versal ; it is the head of the educational system of 
the land, charged with the high responsibilities which 
this position implies ; it must be the depository of the 
lore which former generations have accumulated and 
the pilot of the community in every kind of intellectual 
life ; it must preserve the records of the past, and it 
must train the men who are to make the records of 
the future ; it must combine the work of a museum 
with that of a school. 

A collection of physical objects, though those objects 
be most rare and curious, does not make a museum. 
A collection classified and arranged in the most syste- 
matic manner that has ever been devised would still 
be incomplete. It must be a collection of the records 
of the past, including that which can be stored only 
in the mind. A classified museum, though it include 
a library containing every book that has ever been 
written, would be of no value without the minds to 



94 GEORGE S. MORISON 

use it. The museum which forms so important a part 
of a university must include among its collections a 
collection of educated men. 

The school which is to train the men who are to 
make the records of the future must build iis special 
courses on the foundation of an education which teaches 
how to use the mind. This is the real measure of a 
liberal education; without this, the men it educates 
will be of little value in the community. 

The new epoch which the manufacture of power is 
bringing forth makes new demands upon a university 
— new demands upon it as a museum in the large 
sense which has been stated; new demands upon it 
as a school to train the young men whom the com- 
munity needs, and who will make the records of the 
new epoch. 

The new epoch has an inheritance from older times. 
It increases the work of a university in its capacity 
of museum. In the mere collection and preservation 
of records, the work is greater in a period of change 
than at any other time. Generally, in passing from 
one ethnical period to another, the records of the past 
have been lost. The students of the earliest life of man 
have to grope among prehistoric remains, deciphering 
marks which seem almost as inanimate as geological 
strata, and tracing their uncertain way by analogies 
drawn from races living to-day. 

The new epoch must destroy as well as build; the 
new civilization will wipe out the conditions which 
precede it. The savage and barbarous tribes which 
now live simultaneously in different parts of the world 
must disappear. If their habits, customs, and mental 
conditions are to be recorded, the work must be done 



ENGINEERING EDUCATION 95 

soon ; in one or two centuries it will be too late. The 
structures which represent the achievements of many 
generations cannot be preserved. A few may be kept 
as beautiful relics, specimens in a universal museum. 
But the manufacture of power has made the demands 
of the new epoch so different from those of the old 
that nearly everything which has to be used must be 
built anew. The old and the new cannot exist together. 
It is hard to realize how rapidly the appearance of 
the whole earth may change. Greater care of life is 
a feature of the new epoch. An increase of population 
at the rate of one per cent annually, which is less than 
that in European Russia, would cover the entire land 
surface of the globe, including deserts, mountains, and 
snow-capped plains, with a population as dense as that 
of Belgium, in about three centuries. In the change 
through which we are now passing, a change which will 
leave no isolated tribes for the future, it is one of the 
duties of the university to see that the museums of the 
future are stored with the full history of the past. 

The new epoch is characterized by great material 
changes. In such a time there is danger that natural 
science and physical study will overpower all other 
thought. The treasures of philosophy, of music in 
the broad Greek meaning, and of religion in the noblest 
sense, must be a special charge of the university. 

Around the museum, of which they will form a 
part, must be gathered the men who will collect, study 
and care for what it contains. The university must 
train and educate these men to be the curators and 
scholars who will see that record precedes destruction ; 
who will take care that, when physical existence ends, 
the facts which scholars need are preserved, — and 



96 GEORGE S. MORISON 

who will themselves be the scholars who are to use 
these records. The education of these men must in- 
clude the intelligent study of the delicate accomplish- 
ments and refinements of the past ; the new epoch may 
not have the grace and taste which have marked some 
inferior conditions; in the creation of beauty, Europe 
and America are to-day far below the nations which 
dwelt around the Mediterranean two thousand years 
ago, or the older races which still inhabit Asia. The 
study of history belongs to this department. The 
training for those professions which are based on his- 
tory and precedent will find a place here. But few 
of the young men so educated will remain to form the 
body of educated men which is an essential part of the 
university museum; the majority will seek other lives 
and callings. The general body of educated men, as 
education was once understood, the men who are stu- 
dents rather than workers, readers rather than origi- 
nators, who are guided by what others have done 
rather than by what they themselves would do, will be 
educated in this museum. 

This work is much like what the university has 
always been doing. In this department the effect of the 
new epoch is to develop rather than to change ; it 
makes the old work greater and more important than 
before ; greater because there will be more workers, 
more to do, and more tools to work with ; more impor- 
tant because much which cannot be done soon may 
be lost forever, and because the life of a community 
busied with material development needs a double leaven 
from the educated past. 

But the community has needs for the future as well 
as for the past. The records of the past must be 



ENGINEERING EDUCATION 97 

preserved and studied by that body of educated men 
who make the society of a university town the most 
refined and intelligent that is anywhere found, and 
who give to the precincts of a university a peculiar 
attraction which exists in no other place. The records 
of the future must be made by men of different types 
and different habits, who are educated to fit them for 
active work, who will exchange the pleasures and quiet 
of the university for the roar of the rolling-mill, the 
buzz of the machine-shop, the obscurity of the mine, 
the bustle of the railroad, and the harsh surroundings 
of many other duties. These men must be prepared 
to sacrifice the pleasures of education as such, and the 
delights of study for mental development, and spend 
their lives where their work calls them. 

The definition of engineering which is incorporated 
in the charter of the Institution of Civil Engineers has 
already been quoted, " the art of directing the great 
sources of power in Nature for the use and convenience 
of man." The same definition may be accepted as 
measuring the duties of the new education which is 
to train young men for active work in the new epoch ; 
this education must qualify them to handle all the 
great sources of power in nature, whether those sources 
be animate or inanimate, whether the direction be 
mechanical or physiological, whether the work be inves- 
tigation, construction, management, or invention ; it 
must be prepared to deal with every kind of matter 
of which the world is composed, with the power asso- 
ciated with such matter, and with the laws, simple and 
complicated, which govern it; the object must be to 
direct such matter and power for the improvement of 
mankind ; this must be the work of the new education. 



98 GEORGE S. MORISON 

The engineer claims that all this work belongs to his 
profession, which should include every educated man 
who, with a clear knowledge of the laws which govern 
his work, is handling the powers of nature, be that 
work in a harbor, a machine-shop, a railroad, a mine, 
an edifice, or a laboratory ; the fundamental condition 
being that the work shall be that of an educated man, 
who knows how to design and to direct, in accordance 
with nature's laws of construction, strength, and 
power. 

There is one profession whose age and history have 
given it a rank by itself. Medicine had an old and 
honored name when engineering was still unrecognized. 
But it belongs with the new profession rather than 
with the older ones; its work deals with the powers 
in nature for the use of man. It dififers from engi- 
neering in that it deals with organic Hfe, and not with 
inanimate power. Its recent developments have been 
rendered possible by the same conditions which have 
developed engineering. Its place in a university is 
with the other branches of physical science in the new 
education, rather than in the historical museum. 

The time is not far behind us when none of the 
occupations which strove to direct and use the sources 
of power in inanimate nature required any high degree 
of education. Practice and experience seemed to be 
enough. Good sense, guided by precedents, accom- 
plished what was necessary. While in some ways a 
man specially educated had an advantage, it was not 
enough to give his work the marked position which 
belongs to an educated profession. This is no longer 
so. Within the last half-century the whole conditions 
have changed. 



ENGINEERING EDUCATION 99 

It is not the educated character of the man, but the 
educational needs of the work which makes an edu- 
cated profession. The work must be such that it can 
only be done by those whose education has specially 
qualified them for it. Natural ability combined with 
education will always be greater than either of the 
two alone; but no occupation can become an educated 
profession until education gives the men who follow it 
a distinct advantage over those who have not received 
such education ; and no profession will ever be com- 
posed entirely of educated men until the advantages 
of education outweigh those of mere natural ability. 

The manufacture and use of power, though in its 
crude beginning easily understood and handled, has 
already reached a point where accurate knowledge and 
thorough training are needed for the best results. There 
is not a single department in the manufacture or use 
of power in which the advantage of a thorough educa- 
tion is not felt. 

The study of the strength of materials, and the 
mathematical laws involved, is required in all struc- 
tural work. The older structures were the gradual 
development of experience, each builder inheriting the 
work of his predecessors. So long as dimensions were 
small and the material generally excessive, this worked 
well, but modern engineering asks for the least material 
which can be used to produce safe results ; the strains 
in every part of the structure must be calculated, and 
unnecessary material removed ; the rule that nothing is 
stronger than its weakest part must be applied by 
eliminating the material which gives useless strength. 

Metallurgy has become in all its details a matter of 
refined investigation. A minute variation in the 



100 GEORGE S. MORISON 

amount of phosphorus it contains will make the differ- 
ence between a bar of steel which is perfectly safe for 
structural purposes and one which is treacherous and 
may break without warning. A large portion of the 
steel product of the world is now made in furnaces 
with basic linings which absorb the excess of phos- 
phorus, and which were introduced, not by a practical 
iron-master, but by a chemist, who made dephosphori- 
zation his special study, and sacrificed his life to the 
ardor of his researches.^ 

The ordinary high-pressure slide-valve steam en- 
gine, such as is used for a sawmill in the woods, or 
for a straw-burning harvest outfit on a Dakota prairie, 
is a simple thing which anybody can understand, but 
its use is only justified because temporary conven- 
ience is more important than economy. The marine 
engine, where power is limited by capacity to carry 
fuel, is very dififerent ; scientific study and design have 
reduced the coal consumption of the best marine engines 
to less than a pound and a half per indicated horse- 
power; this has rendered possible the speed of the 
modern Atlantic liner and the extremely cheap carriage 
of the tramp freight steamer. 

Electrical engineering, and the other professional 
branches which are multiplying rapidly, require a like 
scientific training. 

This education is not a simple one. A smattering 
of knowledge may enable a man to understand what is 
going on, but to design and perfect the structures and 
machines which will give the best results requires 
a thorough knowledge of laws whose complications 
increase as their applications are extended. The 

1 Sidney Gilchrist Thomas. 



ENGINEERING EDUCATION loi 

strength of materials, the chemical composition of 
substances, the laws of heat and of dynamic energy, 
with other equally important principles, enter into 
almost every operation of modern life. Every design 
must be worked out in accordance with the laws which 
govern it. There was a time when Yankee ingenuity 
was thought to be equal to anything, and the memory 
of that time still exerts its baneful influence ; works 
which required educated engineers have been intrusted 
to ignorant men, and terrible disasters have followed 
this perversion of trust. The laws which govern the 
problems of mechanical and material devices are com- 
plete, and require trained minds for their solution ; 
they are exact; they can be demonstrated absolutely, 
and a mistake may be followed at once by a disaster. 
There is no place among them for the strange theories 
which, when without the corrective influence of phy- 
sical facts, seem to prove intellectual depravity ; the man 
engaged either in the manufacture of power or 
the utilization of its sources in nature, can find no 
refuge behind unproved theories or questionable prac- 
tices. 

This work is the creation of an epoch differing from 
the past to such a degree that it may itself be considered 
new ; the education which will fit men to perform this 
work must also differ from the old education. The 
old education teaches facts ; it is based on a knowledge 
of what has been done. The new education cares little 
what has been done, provided no one ever wants to 
do it again. The men who are to adapt the great powers 
of nature to the use of man, who are to make the rec- 
ords of the future, must understand the laws by which 
they are to do this, must know how to investigate, and 



102 GEORGE S. MORISON 

how to work themselves, rather than know what work 
other people have done. No work is good unless made 
on correct principles, and education must equip the 
worker with these principles. The education of the 
engineer is intended to fit him to construct and use 
tools which serve some specific purpose; they must be 
adapted to their purpose and nothing else; he must 
be prepared to see them thrown away when their work 
is done. The machine must be properly proportioned ; 
the heavy, clumsy tool which requires unnecessary 
power must be avoided as much as the weak tool which 
fails under its work. Furthermore, this education 
must be applied to every class of work ; to all that 
great variety of tools by which the engineer utilizes 
the powers of nature ; to those more permanent con- 
structions by which the architect would build monu- 
ments for future ages. 

As this education becomes more general, it will 
be realized that the basis of all true beauty is adapta- 
tion to its purpose; that the decorations of the so- 
called fine arts must be made subservient to correct 
and simple lines of construction, which they would 
emphasize rather than conceal. The false motto, Ars 
celare artem, which really means it is good to lie, must 
give place to the glorious Veritas. The incongruous 
absurdities of the present day must disappear. The 
engine frames of the first Cunard steamers were deco- 
rated with Gothic arches ; beside the engines of a 
modern steamer these old machines have a strange 
fantastic look. Architecture, which as a fine art would 
consign itself to the museum, and sometimes, following 
the rapid changes of fashion, seems to differ from 
millinery chiefly in the want of a beautiful object on 



ENGINEERING EDUCATION 103 

which to place its novelties, will find its highest devel- 
opment in correct construction. 

The engineering of the new epoch must be thoroughly 
good. This means the development of the true profes- 
sional idea, and demands professional education. The 
best work has never been done by separate men ; it is 
only accomplished when professional knowledge so 
permeates the whole body of workers that each member 
has the benefit of what all are doing. The first steps 
in invention and in new developments are taken by 
individuals ; the best work is done later when the path 
into which the bold inventor ventured alone is trodden 
by the crowd who find it their usual course. The name 
of Watt was immortalized by his successful introduc- 
tion of the steam engine, but there are thousands of 
men to-day who can build better engines than James 
Watt could. Marine construction owes its present high 
condition to the fact that ship-building has become a 
profession in which each builder has the real benefit 
of what all are doing. There lived in one of our great 
cities an engineer of marvelous inventive skill and 
world-wide reputation, who in a variety of ways has 
left his mark on the developments of the century ; his 
history was a mixture of great accomplishments and 
strange disappointments ; but the saddest part of the 
whole was the work of the last years of his long hfe, 
when, alone, having little intercourse with other men, 
he set himself the task of devising means by which 
future generations might manufacture their power 
when the supplies of fuel now in use should be ex- 
hausted.^ Perhaps no engineer who has ever lived 
was as well qualified to solve this problem as he was ; 

1 John Ericsson. 



104 GEORGE S. MORISON 

but no man, however great, can do good work alone 
and before its time. When the problem on which he 
toiled for years becomes a real issue, there will be 
many men, of far less ability than he, who, sharing the 
professional experience which will come meanwhile, 
will have little difficulty in providing the needed 
power. 

But the best professional spirit demands more than 
this. To training and instruction must be added the 
spirit which alone makes men worthy of the power 
education gives them. They must not only know how 
to work, but they must do it in the spirit which the 
best good of the community demands. The advance of 
mankind through the savage and barbarous periods 
was not continuous. Increased powers are susceptible 
of abuse as well as use, and the evil o^ the abuse has 
sometimes exceeded the good of the use. The new 
epoch will be no exception ; its universality has only 
substituted other dangers for the barbarian invasions 
which destroyed older civilizations. The men who 
would sacrifice their friends and their country for 
their own selfish selves still live; the greater their 
capacities the greater the danger. Never before have 
the opportunities for selfishness been so great, whether 
that selfishness be devoted to acquisition of useless 
wealth, to indulgence in degrading luxuries, or to the 
general disregard of the rights of others, which may 
characterize poor and rich alike. In communities 
where everything is organized on the selfish basis of 
commercial life, these influences may transform the 
great forces of the new epoch into powers of destruc- 
tion from which the world will never recover. 

There is a capacity in the mind which can be 



ENGINEERING EDUCATION 105 

developed to meet these dangers. The antidote for 
these evils which selfishness begets is that power which, 
working in many ways and for many objects, takes 
a man out of himself and is called love, whether that 
love be for human beings, for animal life, for inani- 
mate objects, or for laws and principles, which are 
at least as real as anything else. The education of 
the men who are to do the work of the new epoch 
must not only train them and teach them, but must 
fill them with that interest and enthusiasm which en- 
genders love. This can be done ; the more compli- 
cated the work and the higher the education, the more 
interest the worker finds to make him love his work. 
Every man who has entered earnestly into the study 
of the powers of nature, into the design of works 
which are to utihze those powers, or the execution of 
the plans which the world is profiting by, knows that 
this is true. The ordinary workman who works for 
wages only, does not feel this love ; the professional 
man whose profession is simply a source of income, 
is little better; but education can be so directed that 
no man can really enter into the spirit of the work, 
for which this education has trained him, without 
caring more for the work than for the profit, without 
an interest which is really love. The men who are 
to save the new civilization from business trickery, 
commercial cruelty, and selfish indulgence must feel 
this interest in the work they do ; they must seek the 
best results because they love the best; they must do 
their work because they love it, not perhaps with all 
their heart and soul, but with the full strength of their 
intellectual capacity. This love for their work has 
characterized the best students and investigators in 



io6 GEORGE S. MORISON 

all ages. With the change which the manufacture of 
power has introduced, it should exist in every branch 
of work which deals with the utilization of the great 
sources of power in nature. The university will fail 
in its duty to the community if it does not inspire 
young men with a love for their work. 



X 

Two Kinds of Education for 
Engineers 

By John Butler Johnson * 

Education may be defined as a means of gradual 
emancipation from the thraldom of incompetence. 
Since incompetence leads of necessity to failure, and 
since competence alone leads to certain success, in any 
line of human endeavor, and since the natural or un- 
educated man is but incompetence personified, it is of 
supreme importance that this thraldom, or this enslaved 
condition in which we are all born, should be removed 
in some way. While unaided individual effort has 
worked, and will continue to work marvels, in rare 
instances in our so-called self-made men, these recog- 
nized exceptions acknowledge the rule that mankind 
in general must be aided in acquiring this complete 
mastery over the latent powers of head, heart, and 

1 This essay is reprinted from Harrington and Waddell's Addresses 
to Engineering Students with the kind permission of the Editors. John 
Butler Johnson, 1850-1902, was a graduate of the Engineering Depart- 
ment of the University of Michigan in 1878 and became first a practis- 
ing engineer and then a teacher of engineering. He was Professor of 
Civil Engineering at Washington University, St. Louis, from 1883 to 
1899, and Dean of the College of Mechanics and Engineering of the 
University of Wisconsin from 1899 until his death in 1902. He was a 
member of several engineering societies. President of the Society for 
the Promotion of Engineering Education in 1898, and the author of 
many engineering papers and treatises. — Editor. 

107 



io8 JOHN BUTLER JOHNSON 

hand. These formal aids in this process of emanci- 
pation are found in the grades of schools and colleges 
with which the children of this country are now blessed 
beyond those of almost any other country or time. 
The boys or girls who fail to embrace these emancipat- 
ing opportunities to the fullest extent practicable, are 
thereby consenting to degrees of incompetence and 
their corresponding and resulting failures in life, which 
they have had it in their power to prevent. This they 
will ultimately discover to their chagrin and even 
grief, when it is too late to regain the lost opportu- 
nities. 

There are, however, two general classes of compe- 
tency which I wish to discuss to-day, and which are 
generated in the schools. These are. Competency to 
Serve, and Competency to Appreciate and Enjoy. 

By competency to serve is meant that ability to 
perform one's due proportion of the world's work 
which brings to society a common benefit, which makes 
of this world a continually better home for the race; 
and which tends to fit the race for that immortal life 
in which it puts its trust. 

By competency to appreciate and enjoy is meant that 
ability to understand, to appropriate, and to assimilate 
those great personal achievements of the past and pres- 
ent in the fields of the true, the beautiful, and the good, 
which brings into our lives a kind of peace, and joy, 
and gratitude which can be found in no other way. 

It is true that all kinds of elementary education con- 
tribute alike to both of these ends, but in the so-called 
higher education it is too common to choose between 
them rather than to include them both. Since it is 
only service which the world is willing to pay for, it 



TWO KINDS OF EDUCATION 109 

is only those competent and willing to serve a public 
or private utility who are compensated in a financial 
way. It is the education which brings a competency 
to serve, therefore, which is often called the utilitarian, 
and sometimes spoken of contemptuously as the bread- 
and-butter education. On the other hand the education 
which gives a competency to appreciate and to enjoy 
is commonly spoken of as a cultured education. As to 
which kind of education is the higher and nobler, if 
they must be contrasted, it all depends on the point of 
view. If personal pleasure and happiness are the chief 
end and aim in life, then for that class of persons who 
have no disposition to serve, the cultural education is 
the more worthy of admiration and selection (condi- 
tioned of course on the bodily comforts being so far 
provided for as to make all financial compensations of 
no object to the individual). If, however, service to 
others is the most worthy purpose in life, and if in 
addition such service brings the greatest happiness, then 
that education which develops the ability to serve, in 
some capacity, should be regarded as the higher and 
more worthy. This kind of education has the further 
advantage that the money consideration it brings makes 
its possessor a self-supporting member of society in- 
stead of a drone or parasite, which those people must 
be who can not serve. I never could see the force of 
the statement that " they also serve who only stand and 
wait." It is possible they may serve their own pleas- 
ures, but if this is all, the statement should be so 
qualified. 

The higher education which leads to a life of service 
has been known as a professional education, as law, 
medicine, the ministry, teaching, and the like. These 



no JOHN BUTLER JOHNSON 

have long been known as the learned professions. A 
learned profession may be defined as a vocation in 
which scholarly accomplishments are used in the service 
of society or of other individuals, for a valuable con- 
sideration. Under such a definition every new voca- 
tion in which a very considerable amount of scholar- 
ship is required for its successful prosecution, and 
which is placed in the service of others, must be held 
as a learned profession. And as engineering now de- 
mands fully as great an amount of learning, or scholar- 
ship, as any other, it has already taken a high rank 
among these professions, although as a learned profes- 
sion it is scarcely half a century old. Engineering 
differs from all other learned professions, however, in 
this, that its learning has to do only with the inanimate 
world, the world of dead matter and force. The ma- 
terials, the laws, and the forces of nature, and scarcely 
to any extent its life, are the peculiar field of the 
engineer. Not only is the engineer pretty thoroughly 
divorced from life in general, but even with that 
society of which he is a part his professional life has 
little in common. His profession is so new it prac- 
tically has no past, either of history or of literature, 
which merits his consideration, much less his laborious 
study. Neither do the ordinary social or political prob- 
lems enter in any way into his sphere of operations. 
Natural law, dead matter, and lifeless force make up his 
working world, and in these he lives and moves and 
has his professional being. Professionally regarded, 
what to him is the history of his own or of other races? 
What have the languages and the literatures of the 
world of value to him? What interest has he in 
domestic or foreign politics, or in the various social 



TWO KINDS OF EDUCATION iii 

and religious problems qf the day? In short what 
interest is there for him in what we now commonly 
include in the term "the humanities" ? It must be con- 
fessed that in a professional way they have little or 
none. Except perhaps two other modern languages by 
which he obtains access to the current progress in ap- 
plied science, he has practically no professional interest 
in any of these things. His structures are made no 
safer or more economical ; his prime-movers are no 
more powerful or efficient; his electrical wonders no 
more occult or useful; his tools no more ingenious or 
effective, because of a knowledge of all these human- 
istic affairs. As a mere server of society, therefore, 
an engineer is about as good a tool without all this 
cultural knowledge as with it. But as a citizen, as 
a husband and father, as a companion, and more than 
all, as one's own constant, perpetual, unavoidable per- 
sonality, the taking into one's life of a large knowledge 
of the life and thought of the world, both past and 
present, is a very important matter indeed, and of these 
two kinds of education, as they affect the life-work, 
the professional success, and the personal happiness of 
the engineer, I will speak more in detail. 

I am here using the term engineer as including that 
large class of modern industrial workers who make 
the new application of science to the needs of modern 
Hfe their peculiar business and profession, A man of 
this class may also be called an applied scientist. Evi- 
dently he must have a large acquaintance with such 
practical sciences as surveying, physics, chemistry, geol- 
ogy, metallurgy, electricity, applied, mechanics, kine- 
matics, machine design, power generation and trans- 
mission, structural designing, land and water trans- 



112 JOHN BUTLER JOHNSON 

portation, etc., etc. And as a common solvent of all 
the problems arising in these various subjects he must 
have acquired an extended knowledge of mathematics, 
without which he would be like a sailor with neither 
compass nor rudder. To the engineer mathematics is 
a tool of investigation, a means to an end, and not the 
end itself. The same may be said of his physics, his 
chemistry, and of all his other scientific studies. They 
are all to be made tributary to the solution of problems 
which may arise in his professional career. His entire 
technical education, in fact, is presumably of the useful 
character, and acquired for specific useful ends. Simi- 
larly he needs a free and correct use of his mother- 
tongue, that he may express himself clearly and forci- 
bly both in speech and composition, and an ability 
to read both French and German, that he may read 
the current technical literature in the two other lan- 
guages which are most fruitful in new and original 
technical matter. 

It is quite true that the mental development, the 
growth of one's mental powers and the command over 
the same, which comes incidentally in the acquisition 
of all this technical knowledge, is of far more value 
than the knowledge itself, and hence great care is given 
in all good technical schools to the mental processes of 
the students, and to a thorough and logical method of 
presentation and of acquisition. In other words, while 
you are under our instruction it is much more impor- 
tant that you should think consecutively, rationally, and 
logically, than that your conclusions should be numer- 
ically correct. But as soon as you leave the school the 
exact reverse will hold. Your employer is not con- 
cerned with your mental development, or with your 



TWO KINDS OF EDUCATION 113 

mental processes, so long as your results are correct, 
and hence we must pay some attention to numerical 
accuracy in the school, especially in the upper classes. 
We must remember, however, that the mind of the en- 
gineer is primarily a workshop and not a warehouse 
or lumber-room of mere information. Your facts are 
better stored in your library. Room there is not so 
valuable as it is in the mind, and the information, 
furthermore, is better preserved. Memory is as poor a 
reliance to the engineer as to the accountant. Both 
alike should consult their books when they want the 
exact facts. Knowledge alone is not power. The 
ability to use knowledge is a latent power, and the 
actual use of it is a power. Instead of storing your 
minds with useful knowledge, therefore, I will say 
to you, store your minds with useful tools, and with 
a knowledge only of how to use such tools. Then your 
minds will become mental workshops, well fitted for 
turning out products of untold value to your day and 
generation. Everything you acquire in your course in 
this college, therefore, you should look upon as mental 
tools with which you are equipping yourselves for your 
future careers. It may well be that some of your work 
will be useful rather for the sharpening of your wits 
and for the development of mental grasp, just as gym- 
nastic exercise is of use only in developing your phys- 
ical system. In this case it has served as a tool of 
development instead of one for subsequent use. Be- 
cause all your knowledge here gained is to serve you 
as tools it must be acquired quantitatively rather than 
qualitatively. First, last, and all the time, you are 
required to know not hozc simply, but how much, how 
far, how fast, to what extent, at what cost, with what 



114 JOHN BUTLER JOHNSON 

certainty, and with what factor of safety. In the 
cuhural education where one is learning only to appre- 
ciate and to enjoy, it may satisfy the average mind to 
know that coal burned under a boiler generates steam 
which entering a cylinder moves a piston which turns 
the engine, and stop with that. But the engineer must 
know how many heat units there are in a pound of 
coal burned, how many of these are generated in the 
furnace, how many of them pass into the water, how 
much steam is consumed by the engine per horse-power 
per hour, and finally how much effective work is done 
by the engine per pound of coal fed to the furnace. 
Merely qualitative knowledge leads to the grossest 
errors of judgment and is of that kind of little learning 
which is a dangerous thing. At my summer home I 
have a hydraulic ram set below a dam, for furnishing 
a water supply. Nearby is an old abandoned water- 
power grist mill. A man and his wife were looking at 
the ram last summer and the lady was overheard to 
ask what it was for. The man looked about, saw the 
idle water-wheel of the old mill, and ventured the 
opinion that it must be used to run the mill ! He knew 
a hydraulic ram when he saw it and he knew it was 
used to generate power, and that power would run a 
mill. Ergo, a hydraulic ram will run a mill. This is 
on a par with thousands of similar errors of judgment 
where one's knowledge is qualitative only. All engi- 
neering problems are purely quantitative from the 
beginning to the end, and so are all other problems, in 
fact, whether material, or moral, or financial, or com- 
mercial, or social, or political, or religious.^ All judg- 

1 The student will not of course accept this statement without under- 
taking to work out for himself its consequences, for example, in the 
realms of art and morals. — Editor. 



TWO KINDS OF EDUCATION 115 

ments passed on such problems, therefore, must be 
quantitative judgments. How poorly prepared to pass 
such judgments are those whose knowledge is quali- 
tative only ! Success in all fields depends very largely 
on the accuracy of one's judgment in foreseeing events, 
and in engineering it depends wholly on such accuracy. 
An engineer must see all around his problems, and 
take account of every contingency which can happen 
in the ordinary course of events. When all such con- 
tingencies have been foreseen and provided against, 
then the unexpected cannot happen, as everything has 
been foreseen. It is customary to say, " The unexpected 
always happens." This of course is untrue. What is 
meant is " It is only the unexpected which happens," 
for the very good reason that what has been antici- 
pated has been provided against. 

In order that knowledge may be used as a tool in 
investigations and in the solution of problems, it must 
be so used constantly during the period of its acquisi- 
tion. Hence the large amount of drawing-room, field, 
laboratory, and shop practice introduced into our engi- 
neering courses. We try to make theory and practice 
go hand in hand. In fact we teach that theory is only 
generalized practice. From the necessary facts, ob- 
served in special experiments or in actual practice, and 
which cover a sufficiently wide range of conditions, 
general principles are deduced from which effects of 
given like causes can be foreseen or derived, for new 
cases arising in practice. This is like saying, in sur- 
veying, that with a true and accurate hind-sight an 
equally true and accurate forward course can be run. 
Nearly all engineering knowledge, outside the pure 
mathematics, is of this experimental or empirical char- 



Ii6 JOHN BUTLER JOHNSON 

acter, and we generally know who made the experi- 
ments, under what conditions, over what range of vary- 
ing conditions, how accordant his results were, and 
hence what weight can be given to his conclusions. 
When we can find in our engineering literature no suffi- 
ciently accurate data, or none exactly covering the 
case in hand, we must set to work to make a set of 
experiments which will cover the given conditions, so 
as to obtain numerical factors, or possibly new laws, 
which will serve to make our calculations prove true 
in the completed structure or scheme. The ability to 
plan and carry out such crucial tests and experiments 
is one of the most important objects of an engineering 
college training, and we give our students a large 
amount of such laboratory practice. In all such work 
it is the absolute truth we are seeking and hence any 
guessing at data or falsifying of records, or " doctor- 
ing " of the computations is of the nature of a profes- 
sional crime. Any copying of records from other ob- 
servers, when students are supposed to make their own 
observations, is a fraud upon themselves as well 
as dishonest to their instructor, and indicaites a dispo- 
sition of mind which has nothing in common with that 
of the engineer, who is always and everywhere a truth- 
seeker and truth-tester. The sooner such a person 
leaves the college of engineering the better for him 
and for the engineering profession. Men in other pro- 
fessions may blunder or play false with more or less 
impunity. Thus the lawyer may advocate a bad cause 
without losing caste ; a physician may blunder at will, 
but his mistakes are soon buried out of sight ; a min- 
ister may advocate what he no longer believes himself, 
and feel that the cause justifies his course; but the 



TWO KINDS OF EDUCATION 117 

mistakes of the engineer are quick to find him out and 
to proclaim aloud his incompetence. He is the one 
professional man who is obliged to be right, and for 
whom sophistry and self-deception are a fatal poison. 
But the engineer must be more than honest, he must 
be able to discern the truth. With him an honest mo- 
tive is no justification. He must not only believe he is 
right; he must know he is right. And it is one of the 
greatest elements of satisfaction in this profession, 
that it is commonly possible to secure in advance this 
almost absolute certainty of results. We deal with 
fixed laws and forces, and only so far as the materials 
used may be faulty, or of unknown character, or as 
contingencies could not be foreseen or anticipated, does 
a necessary ignorance enter into the problem. 

It must not be understood, however, that with all of 
both the theory and practice we are able to give our 
students in their four- or five-year course, they will be 
full-fledged engineers when they leave us. They ought 
to be excellent material out of which, with a few years* 
actual practice, they would become engineers of the 
first order. Just as a young physician must have expe- 
rience with actual patients, and as a young lawyer 
must have actual experience in the courts, so must an 
engineer have experience wath real problems before he 
can rightfully lay claim to the title of engineer. And 
in seeking this professional practice they must not be 
too choice. As a rule the higher up one begins the 
sooner his promotion stops, and the lower down he 
begins the higher will he ultimately climb. The man 
at the top should know in a practical way all the work 
over which he is called upon to preside, and this means 
beginning at the bottom. Too many of our graduates 



ii8 JOHN BUTLER JOHNSON 

refuse to do this, and so they stop in a middle position, 
instead of coming into the management of the business, 
which position is reserved for a man who knows it all 
from the bottom up. Please understand that no posi- 
tion is too menial in the learning of a business. But 
as your college training has enabled you to learn a 
new thing rapidly, you should rapidly master these 
minor details of any business, and in a few years you 
should be far ahead of the ordinary apprentice who 
went to work from the grammar school or from the 
high school. The great opportunity for the engineer 
of the future is in the direction and management of our 
various manufacturing industries. We are about to 
become the world's workshop, and as competition grows 
sharper and as greater economies become necessary, the 
technically trained man will become an absolute neces- 
sity in the leading positions in all our industrial works. 
These are the positions hitherto held by men who have 
grown up with the business, but without technical train- 
ing. They are being rapidly supplanted by technical 
men, who, however, must serve their apprenticeship in 
the business, from the bottom up. With this combi- 
nation of theory and practice, and with the American 
genius for invention, and with our superb spirit of 
initiative and of independence, we are already setting 
a pace industrially which no other nation can keep, 
and which will soon leave all others hopelessly 
behind. 

In the foregoing description of the technical educa- 
tion and work of the engineer, the engineer himself 
has been considered as a kind of human tool to be used 
in the interest of society. His service to society alone 
has been in contemplation. But as the engineer has 



TWO KINDS OF EDUCATION 119 

also a personality which is capable of appreciation and 
enjoyment of the best this world has produced in the 
way of literature and art ; as he is to be a citizen and 
a man of family ; and moreover, since he has a conscious 
self with which he must always commune and from 
which he cannot escape, it is well worth his while to 
see to it that this self, this husband and father, this 
citizen and neighbor, is something more than a tool to 
be worked in other men's interests, and that his mind 
shall contain a library, a parlor, and a drawing-room, 
as well as a workshop. And yet how many engineers' 
minds are all shops, out of which only shop-talk 
can be drawn ! Such men are little more than animated 
tools, worked in the interest of society. They are liable 
to be something of a bore to their families and friends, 
almost a cipher in the social and religious life of the 
community, and a weariness to the flesh to their more 
liberal minded professional brethren. Their lives are 
one continuous grind, which has for them doubtless a 
certain grim satisfaction, but which is monotonous and 
tedious in comparison with what they might have been. 
Even when valued by the low standard of money- 
making, they are not nearly so likely to secure lucra- 
tive incomes as they would be with a greater breadth 
of information and worldly interest. They are likely 
to stop in snug professional berths which they find 
ready-made for them, under some sort of fixed admin- 
istration, and maintain through life a subordinate rela- 
tion to directing heads who, with a tithe of their tech- 
nical ability, are yet able, with their worldly knowledge, 
their breadth of interests, and their fellowship with 
men, to dictate to these narrower technical subordi- 
nates, and to fix for them their fields of operation. 



120 JOHN BUTLER JOHNSON 

In order, therefore, that the technical man, who in 
material things knows what to do and how to do it, 
may be able to get the thing done and to direct the 
doing of it, he must be an engineer of men and of 
capital as well as of the materials and forces of nature. 
In other words he must cultivate human interests, hu- 
man learning, human associations, and avail himself 
of every opportunity to further these personal and busi- 
ness relations. If he can make himself a good business 
man, or as good a manager of men, as he usually makes 
of himself in the field of engineering he has chosen, 
there is no place too great, and no salary too high for 
him to aspire to. Of such men are our greatest rail- 
road presidents and general managers and the directors 
of our largest industrial establishments. While most 
of this kind of knowledge must also be acquired in 
actual practice, yet some of it can best be obtained in 
college. . . . The one crying weakness of our engi- 
neering graduates is ignorance of the business, the 
social, and the political world, and of human 
interests in general. They have little knowledge in 
common with the graduates of our literary colleges, 
and hence often find little pleasure in such associations. 
They become clannish, run mostly with men of their 
class, take little interest in the commercial or business 
departments of the establishments with which they are 
connected, and so become more and more fixed in their 
inanimate worlds of matter and force. I beseech you, 
therefore, while yet students, to try to broaden your 
interests, extend your horizons now into other fields, 
even but for a bird's-eye view, and profit, so far as 
possible, by the atmosphere of universal knowledge 
which you can breathe here through the entire period of 



TWO KINDS OF EDUCATION 121 

your college course. Try to find a chum who is in 
another department ; go to literary societies ; haunt the 
library; attend the available lectures in literature, 
science, and art, attend the meetings of the Science 
Club ; and in every way possible, with a peep here and 
a word there, improve to the utmost these marvelous 
opportunities which will never come to you again. 
Think not of tasks ; call no assignments by such a name. 
Call them opportunities, and cultivate a hunger and 
thirst for all kinds of humanistic knowledge outside 
your particular world of dead matter, for you will 
never again have such an opportunity, and you will be 
always thankful that you made good use of this, your 
one chance in a lifetime. 

For your own personal happiness, and that of your 
immediate associates, secure in some way, either in 
college or after leaving the same, an acquaintance with 
the world's best literature, with the leading facts of 
history, and with the biographies of many of the great- 
est men in pure and applied science, as well as of 
statesmen and leaders in many fields. With this 
knowledge of great men, great thoughts, and great 
deeds, will come that lively interest in men and affairs 
which is held by educated men generally, and which 
will put you on an even footing with them in your daily 
intercourse. This kind of knowledge also elevates and 
sweetens the intellectual life, leads to the formation of 
lofty ideals, helps one to a command of good English, 
and in a hundred ways refines, and inspires to high 
and noble endeavor. This is the cultural education 
leading to that appreciation and enjoyment man is 
assumed to possess. 

Think not, however, that I depreciate the peculiar 



122 JOHN BUTLER JOHNSON 

work of the engineering college. It is by this kind of 
education alone that America has already become su- 
preme in nearly all lines of material advancement. I 
am only anxious that the men who have made these 
things possible shall reap their full share of the 
benefits. 

In conclusion let me congratulate you on having 
selected courses of study which will bring you into 
the most intimate relations with the world's work of 
your generation. All life to-day is one endless round 
of scientific applications of means to ends, but such 
applications are still in their infancy. A decade now 
sees more material progress than a century did in the 
past. Not to be scientifically trained in these matters 
is equivalent to-day to a practical exclusion from all 
part and share in the industrial world. The entire 
direction of the world's industry and commerce is to 
be in your hands. You are also charged with making 
the innumerable new discoveries and inventions which 
will come in your generation and almost wholly through 
men of your class. The day of the inventor, ignorant 
of science and of nature's laws, has gone by. The 
mere mechanical contrivances have been pretty well 
exhausted. Henceforth profitable invention must in- 
clude the use or embodiment of scientific principles with 
which the untrained artisan is unacquainted. More 
and more will invention be but the scientific applica- 
tion of means to ends, and this is what we teach in the 
engineering schools. Already our patent office is much 
puzzled to distinguish between engineering and inven- 
tion. Since engineering proper consists in the solution 
of new problems in the material world, and invention 
is likewise the discovery of new ways of doing things, 



TWO KINDS OF EDUCATION 123 

they cover the same field. But an invention is patent- 
able, while an engineering solution is not. Invention is 
supposed in law to be an inborn faculty by which new 
truth is conceived by no definable way of approach. If 
it had not been reached by this particular individual, it 
is assumed that it might never have been known. An 
engineering solution is supposed, and rightly, to have 
been reached by logical processes through known laws 
of matter, and force, and motion, so that another engi- 
neer, given the same problem, would probably have 
reached the same or an equivalent result. And this is 
not patentable. Already a very large proportion of the 
patents issued could be nullified on this ground, if the 
attorneys only knew enough to make their case. More 
and more, therefore, are the men of your class to be 
charged with the responsibility and to be credited with 
the honor of the world's progress, and more and more 
is the world's work to be placed under your direction. 
The world will be remade by every succeeding genera- 
tion, and all by the technically educated class. These 
are your responsibilities and your honors. The tasks 
are great and great will be your rewards. That you 
may fitly prepare yourself for them is the hope and 
trust of your teachers in this college of engineering. 

I will close this address by quoting Professor Hux- 
ley's definition of a liberal education. Says Huxley : 
" That man, I think, has had a liberal education who 
has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready 
servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure 
all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of ; 
whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all 
its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working 
order; ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any 



124 JOHN BUTLER JOHNSON 

kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge 
the anchors of the mind ; whose mind is stored with a 
knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of 
Nature and of the laws of her operations ; one who, 
no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose 
passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, 
the servant of a tender conscience ; who has learned 
to love all beauty, whether of Nature or of art, to 
hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself. 

" Such an one and no other, I conceive, has had a 
liberal education ; for he is, as completely as a man 
can be, in harmony with Nature. He will make the 
best of her, and she of him. They will get on together 
rarely: she as his ever beneficient mother; he as her 
mouthpiece, her conscious self, her minister and 
interpreter." 



XI 

Disinterestedness 

By Francis A. Walker ^ 

The growth of scientific and technical schools on 
this continent during the past thirty years has savored 
of the marvelous. In part, it has been due to the 
changed ideas and the transfigured ideals of the 
American people ; in part, to the recognized need of 
greater skill and more of scientific knowledge for the 
development of the natural resources of the continent 
and for the direction of its growing enterprises. In 
this movement of the age, even the older institutions 
have been compelled profoundly to modify their tradi- 
tional courses of study, substituting scientific and even 
technical instruction for much that was formerly 
deemed essential to a liberal education. 

1 This short address was delivered by General Walker at the dedica- 
tion of the new science and engineering buildings of McGill University, 
Montreal, February 24, 1893. It was published in the Technology Quar- 
terly, the journal of the Society of Arts of the Massachusetts Institute 
of Technology, in April of the same year, and is reprinted here by per- 
mission of the Secretary of the Society. 

Francis Amasa Walker, 1840-1897, was a graduate of Amherst; he en- 
tered the Civil War as Sergeant-major of the 15th Massachusetts In- 
fantry and was mustered out as Brigadier-general. He was successively 
a teacher, an editorial w-riter on the Springfield Republican, and an em- 
ployee of the government in statistics and census work. From 1872 to 
1880 he served as Professor of Political Economy in the Sheffield Sci- 
entific School of Yale University, and was President of the Massachu- 
setts Institute of Technology from 1881 until his death in 1897. — Editor. 

125 



126 FRANCIS A. WALKER 

Of the reluctance, and even resistance which this 
movement has encountered from many who deservedly 
held high places in the old educational order, I would 
not speak with harshness. The notion that scientific 
work was something essentially less fine and high and 
noble than the pursuit of rhetoric and philosophy, 
Latin and Greek, was deeply seated in the minds of the 
leading educators of America a generation ago. And 
it has not even yet wholly yielded to the demonstration 
offered by the admirable effects of the new education 
in training up young men to be as modest and earnest, 
as sincere, manly, and pure, as broad and appreciative, 
as were the best products of the classical culture, and 
withal, more exact and resolute and strong. We can 
hardly hope to see that inveterate prepossession alto- 
gether disappear from the minds of those who have 
entertained it. Probably these good men will have to 
be buried with more or less of their prejudices still 
wrapped about them; but from the new generation 
scientific and technical studies will encounter no such 
obstruction, will suffer no such disparagement. 

Another objection which the new education has en- 
countered is entitled to far more of consideration. 
This has arisen from the sincere conviction of many 
distinguished and earnest educators that the pursuit 
of science, especially where its technical applications are 
brought strongly out, loses much of that disinterested- 
ness which they claim, and rightly claim, is of the very 
essence of education. For the spirit of this objection 
I entertain profound respect. I only differ from these 
honorable gentlemen in believing that the contemplated 
uses of science, whether in advancing the condition of 
mankind, or even in promoting the ulterior usefulness, 



DISINTERESTEDNESS 127 

success, and pecuniary profit of the student of a tech- 
nical profession, do not necessarily impair that disin- 
teredness which I fully concede is essential to the 
highest and truest education of the man. These gen- 
tlemen appear to me to have an altogether unnecessary 
fear of the usefulness of science. They entertain much 
of that dread of " Fruit," which Macaulay, in his 
famous essay on Bacon, doubtless with something of 
exaggeration, as his custom was, attributed to the old 
philosophers. 

I am willing to admit that, in my humble judgment, 
many technical schools have erred in addressing them- 
selves too closely to the practical side of instruction ; 
that they have in some degree neglected principles in 
the study of science, and have borne an undue weight 
upon mere knacks and labor-saving devices and tech- 
nical methods. I believe that in doing this they have 
made a mistake, even from their own point of view, 
and with reference to the very objects they profess. 
Moreover, I am free to acknowledge that those who 
direct many technical schools have made a mistake, in 
altogether, or nearly so, omitting from their curriculum 
philosophical as distinguished from scientific, liberal 
as distinguished from exact, studies. Those technical 
schools will best accomplish their purposes of useful- 
ness, alike to their students and to the State, which 
make more of the sciences than of the arts, more of 
principles than of their applications, and which offer 
to their pupils, in addition to the studies which will 
make them exact and strong, some of the studies and 
exercises which will help to render them, at the same 
time, broad and fine. 

With only such a subordination of technical and 



128 FRANCIS A. WALKER 

scientific studies as is for the ultimate advantage of 
the technical professions themselves, and with such a 
complementing of scientific by philosophical studies 
as has been indicated, I believe that the w^ork of the 
student in schools of technology is as fully entitled to 
be termed disinterested as that of a student in a 
classical college. In neither class of institutions can 
or ought the student to be unmindful that his personal 
success in life and his professional and social position 
are largely to depend upon the manner in which his 
work shall be done in college. All that can be asked 
in regard to any school is that there shall be zeal in 
study, delight in discovery, fidelity to the truth as it 
is discerned, high aims, and ambitions which have not 
sole or primary respect to material rewards. The 
strong desire to become a useful man, well equipped 
for life, capable of doing good work, respected and 
entitled to respect, constitutes no breach of disinter- 
estedness, in any sense of that word in which an edu- 
cator would be justified in using it with commen- 
dation. 

The practical uselessness for any immediate pur- 
pose of a given subject of study may be no reason 
why it should not be pursued ; but, on the other hand, 
the high immediate usefulness of a subject of study 
furnishes no ground from which the educator of 
loftiest aims and purest ideals should regard it with 
contempt or distrust. In either case, the question of 
real import is in what spirit the study is pursued. The 
most distinguished French writer of to-day on matters 
of education, writing, too, in advocacy not of physical 
but of social science, has frankly paid his tribute to the 
disinterestedness of spirit and loftiness of motive 



DISINTERESTEDNESS 129 

which promote and direct scientific research, even in 
its most practical applications. " Let us," he says, 
" pass in review the great founders of modern science 
and the creators of industry, the Keplers and the Ful- 
tons, and we shall be struck by the idealistic and even 
Utopian tendency peculiar to them. They are, in their 
own way, dreamers, artists, poets, controlled by ex- 
perience." 

And if, leaving abstract reasoning, we turn to con- 
template the manner in which the several professions 
are practiced in the community, I seem to find cor- 
roboration of the view that the study of science and 
its applications to the arts of life do not tend to pro- 
duce sordid character or to confine the man merely 
to material aims. Every profession has its black 
sheep and its doubtful practitioners; but, while frankly 
admitting that there are mercenary physicists and 
chemists for revenue only, I boldly challenge com- 
parison between the scientific men of America, as a 
body, and its literary men or even its artists, in the 
respects of devotion to truth, of simple confidence 
in the right, of delight in good work for good work's 
sake, of indisposition to coin name and fame into 
money, of unwillingness to use one thing that is well 
done as a means of passing off upon the public three 
or four things that are ill done. I know the scientific 
men of America well, and I entertain a profound con- 
viction that in sincerity, simplicity, fidelity, and gener- 
osity of character, in nobility of aims and earnestness 
of effort, in everything which should be involved in 
the conception of disinterestedness, they are surpassed, 
if Indeed they are approached, by no other body of 
men. 



130 FRANCIS A. WALKER 

Let us, then, cheer on every enterprise for the exten- 
sion of scientific and technical education, without any 
misgivings as to its effects upon the character and 
subsequent life of the young men of America, with- 
out any fear that they will be rendered sordid in spirit 
or low in their aims by reason of the practical useful- 
ness of the studies to which they are called to apply 
themselves. There is a wonderful virtue in the exact 
sciences to make their students loyal, just-minded, 
clear-headed, and strong against temptation. Here, no 
insidious tendencies to mere plausibility, to sophistry, 
and to self-delusion beset the young and the ambitious. 
The only success here is to be right. The only failure 
possible is to be wrong. To be brilliant in error here 
is only to make the fact of error more conspicuous and 
more ludicrous. Nothing but the truth, nothing less 
than the whole truth, this is the dominating spirit of 
the laboratory, which never withdraws its control over 
the student to keep him from the false path, which 
never intermits its inspiration as it urges him onward 
to the light. 



XII 

The Professional Demand 

By C. R. Manni 

At the first meeting of the Joint Committee on 
Engineering Education with the representatives of the 
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teach- 
ing, the importance of securing from practitioners a 
clear statement of the professional requirements of 
engineering was emphasized. A number of interviews 
with representative engineers revealed the fact that men 
of strong character and common-sense are generally 
much preferred to men of high scholastic attainments. 
This result was so unexpected, that it seemed neces- 
sary to confirm or refute it by a wider expression of 
opinion than is possible by means of personal inter- 

1 This statement is taken from the report prepared by Dr. C. R. 
Mann of his study of engineering education made on behalf of the 
five American National Engineering societies and of the Carnegie 
Foundation. This part of Dr. Mann's investigation — which, taken as a 
whole, is the most thorough and comprehensive study of engineering 
schools ever made in this country — is especially illuminating to the 
young student from the fact that it states with an authority which no 
individual man can possess what the qualities are which the practical 
engineer values most in the young graduate. The breadth, sanity, and 
humanity of the views of practical engineers on this question, as codified 
by Dr. Mann, offer eloquent testimony to the high intellectual and moral 
level of the profession today. 

C. R. Mann was born in 1869, educated at Columbia and the Uni- 
versity of Berlin, and is at present a member of the Physics Department 
of the University of Chicago. He has been on leave of absence since 
1914 engaged in making his study of engineering schools. — Editor. 

131 



132 C. R. MANN 

views. Hence in ^Nlarch, 191 5, a circular letter was 
addressed to the members of the national engineering 
societies. 

This letter asked the engineeers first to mention the 
points at which the work of the schools seems to be 
either effective or ineffective ; second, to name the 
most important factors in determining probable success 
or failure in engineering, and to describe the best 
methods of finding out whether a young man has the 
necessary traits or not ; and third, to make suggestions 
as to how the schools might be strengthened. 

Altogether 1400 replies were received, 789 from 
civil engineers, 374 from electrical engineers, 199 from 
mechanical engineers, and 38 from unclassified en- 
gineers. Every state in the Union was represented and 
63 came from abroad. The answers also give further 
insight into the status of their authors, since they con- 
tain statements of personal experience. Though these 
are too general and varied to permit of summari- 
zation, they show that the letters came from men who 
have been successful in engineering, who have attained 
positions of authority in which they have had wide 
experience in employing college graduates, and who 
therefore have well defined ideas on the questions 
raised. 

The summary of the replies shows that there is 
only one thing in which the majority of those who 
replied think the school work is effective, and that is 
in imparting knowledge of the sciences on which en- 
gineering is based. About one-quarter of the answers 
also mention training in methods of analytical think- 
ing as one of the successful efforts of the schools. A 
few more believe that some ambition and enthusiasm 



THE PROFESSIONAL DEMAND 133 

are developed by the college work. On the other hand, 
present school methods seem less effective to some ten 
or fifteen per cent of those who replied, in training 
to efficient and motivated work, and in developing ini- 
tiative, resourcefulness, responsibility, accuracy, thor- 
oughness, common-sense, and a broad view of life. 
Nearly one-third of the answers complain of the en- 
gineer's inability to express himself well in speech 
and writing; more than half complain of the young 
graduate's inability to apply the theory he has learned 
to practice ; and about one-third would be better satis- 
fied if the budding engineer knew more than he does 
about business methods and practice. 

The 1400 answers mention every conceivable human 
characteristic as essential to success. These have 
been arranged in the following six groups. The figures 
show the number of times the factors in each group 
appeared in the letters. 

Character, integrity, responsibility, resourcefulness, in- 
itiative 2826 

Judgment, common-sense, scientific attitude perspective. . .1212 

Efficiency, thoroughness, accuracy, industry 1 191 

Understanding of men, executive ability 1007 

Knowledge of the fundamentals of engineering science . . 478 
Technique of practice and of business 398 

The first group contains the various qualities that 
express the moral attitude of the man. The second 
contains the qualities that are related to his reason- 
ing processes. The qualities in the third group are 
expressed in the way the man works with things, and 
those in the fourth group are manifested by his manner 
of dealing with men. The contents of the fifth and 
sixth groups are self-explanatory. Many more words 



134 C. R. MANN 

than those here given appear in the letters, but the 
essential ideas have been retained in the summary. 

About half of the answers say that the record of 
experience in practical work is the best criterion for 
judging of a young man's prospects. But few college 
graduates have such experience to show ; then the per- 
sonal impression he makes is regarded as the next best 
means of sizing up a candidate for a job. The school 
record is given third place in this list, followed by 
information as to how he spends his spare time and 
personal references from acquaintances. 

The most important facts disclosed by this summary 
are, first, that the only thing in which the schools are 
judged to be successful by a majority of those voting 
is " imparting technical knowledge " ; and second, that 
in stating the factors essential to success, the personal 
and common-sense qualities are mentioned about five 
times as often as is knowledge of theory and of prac- 
tice. The opinions of these 1400 engineers thus sub- 
stantiate the results of the personal interviews. But 
notwithstanding this agreement, it seemed necessary 
again to refer the vital question involved to the en- 
gineering profession. For if the schools are concen- 
trating their attention on imparting information, with- 
out a conscious effort to develop character and judg- 
ment, far-reaching changes in school methods will 
have to be made. It would, therefore, be unwise to 
use the conclusion as a standard of criticizing and 
suggesting, without further confirmation. Hence in 
April, 1916, a second letter was addressed to the mem- 
bers of the national engineering societies. 

This second letter presented the six groups of 



THE PROFESSIONAL DEMAND 135 

factors essential to success as just given and asked 
each man to number them in what he considered to be 
their importance in determining success in engineering. 
Ahogether 7038 engineers voted on the relative im- 
portance of the six groups. Character was voted to 
first place by an average majority of 94.5% and Tech- 
nique was given last place by an average majority of 
93.4%. The other groups retained their original 
positions by votes ranging from 56% to 82%. The 
ballots were sorted according to the numbers of years 
of practical experience of the voters and counted sep- 
arately for each ten-year period. But though the votes 
on the different items ranged from 56% to 98%, 
the vote for any given item varied less than 5% for 
differences in experience. Because of this constancy 
of the vote on each item it is clear that this statement 
corresponds to a rather definite ideal in the profes- 
sional mind. It is therefore safe to use it in testing 
and planning the work of the schools. 

When applying this definition to the schools it is 
desirable not to forget several perfectly obvious facts. 
In the first place, all the qualities mentioned are essen- 
tial to genuine success, and conscious effort should 
be made to develop all of them as far as is possible. 
Second, character, initiative, common-sense, and qual- 
ities of this sort cannot be taught explicitly like multi- 
plication tables and rules of grammar. Third, educa- 
tion is a continuous process of growth, and therefore 
the conscious development of the qualities of the first 
four groups cannot to advantage be arrested for four 
years, even for the sake of a mastery of knowledge and 
technique. Fourth, the man whose character, judg- 



136 C. R. MANN 

ment, efficiency, and understanding of men has devel- 
oped most during his college years has the best chance 
after graduation. 

This seems an elaborate means of verifying such 
an old and self-evident thesis as that man is greater 
than his knowledge. Yet in spite of its venerable age 
and its frequent neglect by the schools, this thesis is 
still the guiding principle of sound educational prac- 
tice. The engineering profession can render no 
greater service to education than by constantly remind- 
ing the schools in this age of bewildering technique 
that the development of character, judgment, and 
human sympathy is the ultimate end and aim of edu- 
cation. Because of the unprecedented development of 
both the mechanic arts and the educative arts in the 
past fifty years, the amount of technical detail that 
must be mastered by any one who would win success 
in either field is so vast and so complicated that few 
can hope to achieve excellence in both. Hence in gen- 
eral the advice of the engineer about the technical de- 
tails of teaching is no more valuable than the school- 
master's advice about the technical details of engineer- 
ing. The professor and the practitioner can however 
be of enormous help to each other in determining 
ideals, aims, ends and purposes, especially at the pres- 
ent moment when far-sighted men with profound faith 
in humanity are more than ever needed in managing 
the practical affairs of life. 

From the point of view of imparting technical in- 
formation, the engineering schools are undoubtedly 
among the most efficient of our present educational 
institutions. This is partly due to the importance 
that attaches to efficiency in all engineering work. For 



THE PROFESSIONAL DEMAND 137 

them, efficiency is bred in the bone and finds expres- 
sion in everything related to the profession. More- 
over, an engineer cannot bluff the laws of nature or 
bury his mistakes. Working as he must in the open 
and compelled as he is to create structures that must 
meet the test of a real try-out before the public, the 
engineer is held by conditions intrinsic to his work to 
a standard of practical achievement that has so far 
made it unnecessary to license him for public protec- 
tion as is done with doctors and lawyers. 

But the fact that the engineering schools stand high 
among educational institutions as regards imparting 
technical information must not be interpreted to mean 
that their efficiency with respect to the general educa- 
tional ideal as defined by the demands of the engineer- 
ing profession cannot be enormously increased. The 
best locomotives convert less than six per cent of the 
heat energy of the coal into useful work. Does it 
follow that the efficiency of the locomotive cannot be 
increased ? 

Again schools of applied science have contributed 
much to the progress of invention and discovery that 
have drawn men physically so close together and added 
so much to the comfort and pleasure of life. For 
years we have taken just pride in this rapidly extend- 
ing mastery of material things and can no longer realize 
how men ever lived without railroads, steamboats, tele- 
phones, trolleys, automobiles, " movies " and phono- 
graphs. The per capita wealth has also increased in 
fifty years from $500 to $1900. So intimate have our 
physical relations become, that we had settled down to 
the l)eHef that the brotherhood of man was an accom- 
plished fact and that war was well-nigh unthinkable. 



138 C. R. MANN 

But suddenly we are brought face to face with a new 
and startHng situation. While still blinded by the 
faith that this binding together of men physically had 
made war impossible, the Pentecost of Calamity burst 
upon us like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. The feel- 
ings of astonishment aroused by this catastrophe have 
now given way to an earnest search for its meaning. 
In particular, what is its significance to the engineer- 
ing schools ? 

That it has given added impulse to the industrial 
urge and brought home a wider appreciation of the 
need of co-ordinating industrial enterprise and scientific 
research, all must recognize. No other interpretation 
can be given to the organization of the Naval Con- 
sulting Board, the National Research Council, and the 
joint committee on co-operation of the National Acad- 
emy of Science and the National Engineering Societies. 

Fundamentally essential as are these activities, are 
they all that should be undertaken for strengthening 
the foundations of the country's prosperity? Have the 
schools no other opportunity for service besides that 
of expanding and co-ordinating their research work, of 
intensifying their emphasis on scientific investigation 
for the mere increase of knowledge among men? 
Such work will lead to an increased mastery over 
materials. It will strengthen our earth-grip and re- 
sult in greater convenience and comfort of life. This 
is all good. But will this further exaltation of the 
mechanic arts alone prevent men from utilizing the 
added skill and knowledge for murderous purposes? 
Will it develop those moral qualities without which 
increased technical skill is as much a menace as a 
blessing? 



THE PROFESSIONAL DEMAND 139 

The professional demand identifies the aim of en- 
gineering education with the aim of all education, 
namely, the development of men of character and of 
practical ability. The conditions under which this 
must now be done are, however, new and inspiring. 
For research in natural science has resulted not only 
in increased dominion over nature for the benefit of 
mankind, but also in new conceptions of society and a 
new philosophy of life. The schools are trying to keep 
pace with these changes by adding to the old units of 
learning new subjects of study, and by building these 
discrete bundles of knowledge into special courses to 
meet specific demands. The net result is an inorganic 
composite in which the cultural and the utilitarian exist 
side by side as rivals for the student's time. Scientific 
investigation has only just begun to transform the 
methods and aims of all instruction as it has trans- 
formed the methods and aims of living. We are just 
beginning to discover how college studies may be made 
socially serviceable and manual labor intellectually 
fruitful. 

The solution of these problems will require much 
careful experimenting and study on the part of teach- 
ers ; but as progress is made the schools will find that 
they are each year better able to meet the demands of 
the engineering profession. For character, judgment, 
efficiency, and an understanding of men — those per- 
sonal qualities that make up so large a portion of 
the engineer's equipment — develop best in men who 
love their work and who labor with enthusiasm and 
intelligence at things which they know to be worth 
while. 



XIII 

On the Advisableness of Improving 
Natural Knowledge 

By Thomas Henry Huxley ^ 

This time two hundred years ago — in the begin- 
ning of January, 1666 — those of our forefathers who 
inhabited this great and ancient city, took breath be- 
tween the shocks of two fearful calamities: one not 
quite past, although its fury had abated; the other to 
come. 

Within a few yards of the very spot on which we are 
assembled, so the tradition runs, that painful and 
deadly malady, the plague, appeared in the latter 
months of 1664; and, though no new visitor, smote the 
people of England, and especially of her capital, with a 
violence unknown before, in the course of the foUow- 

1 This address was first delivered in London in 1866; it was later 
printed in the Fortnightly Review, and eventually included in the vol- 
ume of Huxley's essays called Methods and Results. Thomas Henry 
Huxley, 1825-1895, was educated for the medical profession, but spent 
his life in investigating, teaching, and popularizing natural science. His 
able championship of the Darwinian hypothesis earned him the nick- 
name of " Darwin's bull-dog." He never ceased to advocate the study 
of science in schools and to him is due a large share of credit for edu- 
cational reforms in this direction. This essay, and the one on " Science 
and Culture " below, show at once how high and how reasonable 
was his conception of the place of science in education. Huxley's com- 
ments in " Science and Culture " on Arnold's ideas and Arnold's reply 
in the following essay serve to define clearly the position which each 
held. — Editor. 

140 



IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 141 

ing year. The hand of a master has pictured what 
happened in those dismal months ; and in that truest 
of fictions, The History of the Plague Year, Defoe 
shows death, with every accompaniment of pain and 
terror, stalking through the narrow streets of old 
London, and changing their busy hum into a silence 
broken only by the wailing of the mourners of fifty 
thousand dead ; by the woeful denunciations and mad 
prayers of fanatics ; and by the madder yells of de- 
spairing profligates. 

But, about this time in 1666, the death-rate had sunk 
to nearly its ordinary amount ; a case of plague oc- 
curred only here and there, and the richer citizens who 
had flown from the pest had returned to their dwell- 
ings. The remnant of the people began to toil at the 
accustomed round of duty, or of pleasure ; and the 
stream of city life bid fair to flow back along its old 
bed, with renewed and uninterrupted vigor. 

The newly-kindled hope was deceitful. The great 
plague, indeed, returned no more ; but what it had done 
for the Londoners, the great fire, which broke out in 
the autumn of 1666, did for London ; and, in September 
of that year, a heap of ashes and the indestructible 
energy of the people were all that remained of the glory 
of five-sixths of the city within the walls. 

Our forefathers had their own ways of accounting 
for each of these calamities. They submitted to the 
plague in humility and in penitence, for they believed 
it to be the judgment of God. But, towards the fire 
they were furiously indignant, interpreting it as the 
eflfect of the malice of man, — as the work of the 



142 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

Republicans, or of the Papists, according as their 
prepossessions ran in favor of loyalty or of Puri- 
tanism. 

It would, I fancy, have fared but ill with one who, 
standing where I now stand, in what was then a 
thickly-peopled and fashionable part of London, should 
have broached to our ancestors the doctrine which I 
now propound to you — that all their hypotheses were 
alike wrong; that the plague was no more, in their 
sense. Divine judgment, than the fire was the work of 
any political, or of any religious, sect; but that they 
were themselves the authors of both plague and fire, 
and that they must look to themselves to prevent the 
recurrence of calamities, to all appearance so peculiarly 
beyond the reach of human control — so evidently the 
result of the wrath of God, or of the craft and subtlety 
of an enemy. 

And one may picture to one's self how harmoniously 
the holy cursing of the Puritan of that day would have 
chimed in with the unholy cursing and the crackling 
wit of the Rochesters and Sedleys, and with the revil- 
ings of the political fanatics, if my imaginary plain 
dealer had gone on to say that, if the return of such 
misfortunes were ever rendered impossible, it would 
not be in virtue of the victory of the faith of Laud, 
or of that of Milton ; and, as little, by the triumph of 
republicanism, as by that of monarchy. But that the 
one thing needful for compassing this end was, that 
the people of England should second the efforts of an 
insignificant corporation, the establishment of which, 
a few years before the epoch of the great plague and 
the great fire, had been as little noticed, as they were 
conspicuous. 



IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 143 

Some twenty years before the outbreak of the 
plague a few calm and thoughtful students banded 
themselves together for the purpose, as they phrased it, 
of " improving natural knowledge." The ends they 
proposed to attain cannot be stated more clearly than 
in the words of one of the founders of the organiza- 
tion : — 

" Our business was (precluding matters of theology 
and state affairs) to discourse and consider of philo- 
sophical inquiries, and such as related thereunto : — as 
Physick, Anatomy, Geometry, Astronomy, Navigation, 
Staticks, Magneticks, Chymicks, Mechanicks, and Nat- 
ural Experiments ; with the state of these studies and 
their cultivation at home and abroad. We then dis- 
coursed of the circulation of the blood, the valves in 
the veins, the venae lactese, the lymphatic vessels, the 
Copernican hypothesis, the nature of comets and new 
stars, the satellites of Jupiter, the oval shape (as it 
then appeared) of Saturn, the spots on the sun and 
its turning on its own axis, the inequalities and seleno- 
graphy of the moon, the several phases of Venus and 
Mercury, the improvement of telescopes and grinding 
of glasses for that purpose, the weight of air, the pos- 
sibility or impossibility of vacuities and nature's ab- 
horrence thereof, the Torricellian experiment in quick- 
silver, the descent of heavy bodies and the degree of 
acceleration therein, with divers other things of like 
nature, some of which were then but new discoveries, 
and others not so generally known and embraced as 
now they are ; with other things appertaining to what 
hath been called the New Philosophy, which from the 
times of Galileo at Florence, and Sir Francis Bacon 
(Lord Verulam) in England, hath been much culti- 



144 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

vated in Italy, France, Germany, and other parts 
abroad, as well as with us in England." 

The learned Dr. Wallis, writing in 1696, narrates 
in these words, what happened half a century before, 
or about 1645. The associates met at Oxford, in the 
rooms of Dr. Wilkins, who was destined to become a 
bishop; and subsequently coming together in London, 
they attracted the notice of the king. And it is a 
strange evidence of the taste for knowledge which the 
most obviously worthless of the Stuarts shared with 
his father and grandfather, that Charles the Second 
was not content with saying witty things about his phil- 
osophers, but did wise things with regard to them. 
For he not only bestowed upon them such attention 
as he could spare from his poodles and his mistresses, 
but, being in his usual state of impecuniosity, begged 
for them of the Duke of Ormond ; and, that step being 
without effect, gave them Chelsea College, a charter, 
and a mace : crowning his favors in the best way they 
could be crowned, by burdening them no further with 
royal patronage or state interference. 

Thus it was that the half-dozen young men, studious 
of the " New Philosophy," who met in one another's 
lodgings in Oxford or in London, in the middle of the 
seventeenth century, grew in numerical and in real 
strength, until, in its latter part, the " Royal Society 
for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge " had al- 
ready become famous, and had acquired a claim upon 
the veneration of Englishmen, which it has ever since 
retained, as the principal focus of scientific activity in 
our islands, and the chief champion of the cause it 
was formed to support. 

It was by the aid of the Royal Society that Newton 



IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 14S 

published his Principia. If all the books in the world, 
except the Philosophical Transactions, were destroyed, 
it is safe to say that the foundations of physical science 
would remain unshaken, and that the vast intellectual 
progress of the last two centuries would be largely, 
though incompletely, recorded. Nor have any signs of 
halting or of decrepitude manifested themselves in our 
own times. As in Dr. Wallis's days, so in these, " our 
business is, precluding theology and state affairs, to 
discourse and consider of philosophical inquiries." But 
our " Mathematick " is one which Newton would have 
to go to school to learn ; our " Staticks, Mechanicks, 
Magneticks, Chymicks, and Natural Experiments" 
constitute a mass of physical and chemical knowledge, 
a glimpse at which would compensate Galileo for the 
doings of a score of inquisitorial cardinals ; our " Phys- 
sick " and " Anatomy " have embraced such infinite 
varieties of being, have laid open such new worlds in 
time and space, have grappled, not unsuccessfully, with 
such complex problems, that the eyes of Vesalius and 
of Harvey might be dazzled by the sight of the tree 
that has grown out of their grain of mustard seed. 

The fact is perhaps rather too much, than too little, 
forced upon one's notice, nowadays, that all this mar- 
velous intellectual growth has a no less wonderful ex- 
pression in practical life; and that, in this respect, if in 
no other, the movement symbolized by the progress of 
the Royal Society stands without a parallel in the 
history of mankind. 

A series of volumes as bulky as the Transactions of 
the Royal Society might possibly be filled with the 
subtle speculations of the Schoolmen ; not improbably, 
the obtaining a mastery over the products of mediaeval 



146 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

thought might necessitate an even greater expenditure 
of time and of energy than the acquirement of the 
" New Philosophy " ; but though such work engrossed 
the best intellects of Europe for a longer time 
than has elapsed since the great fire, its effects 
were " writ in water," so far as our social state 
is concerned. 

On the other hand, if the noble first President of 
the Royal Society could revisit the upper air and once 
more gladden his eyes with a sight of the familiar 
mace, he would find himself in the midst of a material 
civilization more different from that of his day, than 
that of the seventeenth was from that of the first cen- 
tury. And if Lord Brouncker's native sagacity had 
not deserted his ghost, he would need no long reflec- 
tion to discover that all these great ships, these rail- 
ways, these telegraphs, these factories, these printing- 
presses, without which the whole fabric of modern 
English society would collapse into a mass of stag- 
nant and starving pauperism, — that all these pillars of 
our State are but the ripples and the bubbles upon the 
surface of that great spiritual stream, the springs of 
which only, he and his fellows were privileged to see ; 
and seeing, to recognize as that which it behoved them 
above all things to keep pure and undefiled. 

It may not be too great a flight of imagination to 
conceive our noble revenant not forgetful of the great 
troubles of his own day, and anxious to know how 
often London had been burned down since his time, 
and how often the plague had carried oft" its thou- 
sands. He would have to learn that, although London 
contains tenfold the inflammable matter that it did in 
1666; though, not content with filling our rooms with 



IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 147 

woodwork and light draperies, we must needs lead 
inflammable and explosive gases into every corner of 
our streets and houses, we never allow even a street 
to burn down. And if he asked how this had come 
about, we should have to explain that the improvement 
of natural knowledge has furnished us with dozens of 
machines for throwing water upon fires, any one 
of which would have furnished the ingenious Mr. 
Hooke, the first " curator and experimenter " of the 
Royal Society, with ample materials for discourse 
before half a dozen meetings of that body; and that, 
to say truth, except for the progress of natural knowl- 
edge, we should not have been able to make even the 
tools by which these machines are constructed. And, 
further, it would be necessary to add, that although 
severe fires sometimes occur and inflict great damage, 
the loss is very generally compensated by societies, 
the operations of which have been rendered possible 
only by the progress of natural knowledge in the direc- 
tion of mathematics, and the accumulation of wealth 
in virtue of other natural knowledge. 

But the plague? My Lord Brouncker's observation 
would not, I fear, lead him to think that Englishmen 
of the nineteenth century are purer in Hfe, or more 
fervent in religious faith, than the generation which 
could produce a Boyle, an Evelyn, and a Milton. He 
might find the mud of society at the bottom, instead of 
at the top, but I fear that the sum total would be as 
deserving of swift judgment as at the time of the 
Restoration. And it would be our duty to explain 
once more, and this time not without shame, that we 
have no reason to believe that it is the improvement 
of our faith, nor that of our morals, which keeps the 



148 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

plague from our city ; but, again, that it is the improve- 
ment of our natural knowledge. 

We have learned that pestilences will only take up 
their abode among those who have prepared unswept 
and ungarnished residences for them. Their cities 
must have narrow, unwatered streets, foul with ac- 
cumulated garbage. Their houses must be ill-drained, 
ill-lighted, ill-ventilated. Their subjects must be ill- 
washed, ill-fed, ill-clothed. The London of 1665 was 
such a city. The cities of the East, where plague has 
an enduring dwelling, are such cities. We, in later 
times, have learned somewhat of Nature, and partly 
obey her. Because of this partial improvement of our 
natural knowledge and of that fractional obedience, we 
have no plague ; because that knowledge is still very 
imperfect and that obedience yet incomplete, typhoid 
is our companion and cholera our visitor. But it is 
not presumptuous to express the belief that, w^hen our 
knowledge is more complete and our obedience the 
expression of our knowledge, London will count her 
centuries of freedom from typhoid and cholera, as she 
now gratefully reckons her two hundred years of igno- 
rance of that plague which swooped upon her thrice 
in the first half of the seventeenth century. 

Surely, there is nothing in these explanations which 
is not fully borne out by the facts? Surely, the prin- 
ciples involved in them are now admitted among the 
fixed beliefs of all thinking men? Surely, it is true 
that our countrymen are less subject to fire, famine, 
pestilence, and all the evils which result from a want 
of command over and due anticipation of the course 
of Nature, than were the countrymen of Milton ; and 
health, wealth, and well-being are more abundant with 



IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 149 

us than with them ? But no less certainly is the differ- 
ence due to the improvement of our knowledge of 
Nature, and the extent to which that improved knowl- 
edge has been incorporated with the household words 
of men, and has supplied the springs of their daily- 
actions. 

Granting for a moment, then, the truth of that which 
the depredators of natural knowledge are so fond of 
urging, that its improvement can only add to the re- 
sources of our material civilization ; admitting it to 
be possible that the founders of the Royal Society 
themselves looked for no other reward than this, I 
cannot confess that I was guilty of exaggeration when 
I hinted, that to him who had the gift of distinguishing 
between prominent events and important events, the 
origin of a combined effort on the part of mankind 
to improve natural knowledge might have loomed 
larger than the Plague and have outshone the glare 
of the Fire ; as a something fraught with a wealth of 
beneficence to mankind, in comparison ^with which the 
damage done by those ghastly evils would shrink into 
insignificance. 

It is very certain that for every victim slain by the 
plague, hundreds of mankind exist and find a fair 
share of happiness in the world by the aid of the 
spinning jenny. And the great fire, at its worst, could 
not have burned the supply of coal, the daily working 
of which, in the bowels of the earth, made possible by 
the steam pump, gives rise to an amount of wealth to 
which the millions lost in old London are but as an old 
song. 

But spinning jenny and steam pump are, after all. 



I50 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

but toys, possessing an accidental value; and natural 
knowledge creates multitudes of more subtle con- 
trivances, the praises of which do not happen to be 
sung because they are not directly convertible into in- 
struments for creating wealth. When I contemplate 
natural knowledge squandering such gifts among men, 
the only appropriate comparison I can find for her is, 
to liken her to such a peasant woman as one sees in 
the Alps, striding ever upward, heavily burdened, and 
with mind bent only on her home ; but yet without 
effort and without thought, knitting for her children. 
Now stockings are good and comfortable things, and 
the children will undoubtedly be much the better for 
them ; but surely it would be short-sighted, to say the 
least of it, to depreciate this toiling mother as a 
mere stocking-machine — a mere provider of physical 
comforts ? 

However, there are blind leaders of the blind, and 
not a few of them, who take this view of natural 
knowledge, and can see nothing in the bountiful mother 
of humanity but a sort of comfort-grinding machine. 
According to them, the improvement of natural 
knowledge always has been, and always must be, syn- 
onymous with no more than the improvement of the 
material resources and the increase of the gratifica- 
tions of men. 

Natural knowledge is, in their eyes, no real mother 
of mankind, bringing them up with kindness, and, 
if need be, with sternness, in the way they should go, 
and instructing them in all things needful for their wel- 
fare ; but a sort of fairy god-mother, ready to furnish 
her pets with shoes of swiftness, swords of sharpness, 
and omnipotent Aladdin's lamps, so that they may have 



IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 151 

telegraphs to Saturn, and see the other side of the 
moon, and thank God they are better than their be- 
nighted ancestors. 

If this talk were true, I, for one, should not greatly 
care to toil in the service of natural knowledge. I 
think I would just as soon be quietly chipping my own 
flint ax, after the manner of my forefathers a few 
thousand years back, as be troubled with the endless 
malady of thought which now infests us all, for such 
reward. But I venture to say that such views are 
contrary alike to reason and to fact. Those who dis- 
course in such fashion seem to me to be so intent upon 
trying to see what is above Nature, or what is behind 
her, that they are blind to what stares them in the face 
in her. * 

I should not venture to speak thus strongly if my 
justification were not to be found in the simplest and 
most obvious facts, — if it needed more than an appeal 
to the most notorious truths to justify my assertion, 
that the improvement of natural knowledge, whatever 
direction it has taken, and however low the aims of 
those who may have commenced it — has not only 
conferred practical benefits on men, but, in so doing, 
has afifected a revolution in their conceptions of the 
universe and of themselves, and has profoundly altered 
their modes of thinking and their views of right and 
wrong. I say that natural knowledge, seeking to sat- 
isfy natural wants, has found the ideas which can alone 
still spiritual cravings. I say that natural knowledge, 
in desiring to ascertain the laws of comfort, has been 
driven to discover those of conduct, and to lay the 
foundations of a new morality. 



152 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

Let us take these points separately; and first, what 
great ideas has natural knowledge introduced into 
men's minds? 

I cannot but think that the foundations of all natural 
knowledge were laid when the reason of man first came 
face to face with the facts of Nature ; when the savage 
first learned that the fingers of one hand are fewer than 
those of both; that it is shorter to cross a stream than 
to head it; that a stone stops where it is unless it be 
moved, and that it drops from the hand which lets 
it go; that light and heat come and go with the sun; 
that sticks burn away in a fire ; that plants and animals 
grow and die; that if he struck his fellow savage a 
blow he would make him angry, and perhaps get a 
blow in return, while if he offered him a fruit he would 
please him, and perhaps receive a fish in exchange. 
When men had acquired this much knowledge, the out- 
lines, rude though they were, of mathematics, of 
physics, of chemistry, of biology, of moral, economical, 
and political science, were sketched. Nor did the germ 
of religion fail when science began to bud. Listen to 
words which, though new, are* yet three thousand 
years old : — 

"... When in heaven the stars about the moon 
Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid, 
And every height comes out, and jutting peak 
And valley, and the immeasurable heavens 
Break open to their highest, and all the stars 
Shine, and the shepherd gladdens in his heart." ^ 

If the half savage Greek could share our feelings thus 
far, it is irrational to doubt that he went further, to 
find as we do, that upon that brief gladness there fol- 

1 Need it be said tliat this is Tennyson's English for Homer's Greek? 



IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 153 

lows a certain sorrow, — the little light of awakened 
human intelligence shines so mere a spark amidst the 
abyss of the unknown and unknowable; seems so in- 
sufficient to do more than illuminate the imperfections 
that cannot be remedied, the aspirations that cannot be 
realized, of man's own nature. But in this sadness, 
this consciousness of the limitation of man, this sense 
of an open secret which he cannot penetrate, lies the 
essence of all religion ; and the attempt to embody it 
in the forms furnished by the intellect is the origin 
of the higher theologies. 

Thus it seems impossible to imagine but that the 
foundations of all knowledge — secular or sacred — 
were laid when intelligence dawned, though the super- 
structure remained for long ages so slight and feeble 
as to be compatible with the existence of almost any 
general view respecting the mode of governance of 
the universe. No doubt, from the first, there were 
certain phenomena which, to the rudest mind, pre- 
sented a constancy of occurrence, and suggested that 
a fixed order ruled, at any rate, among them. I doubt 
if the grossest of Fetish worshipers ever imagined that 
a stone must have a god within it to make it fall, or 
that a fruit had a god within it to make it taste sweet. 
With regard to such matters as these, it is hardly 
questionable that mankind from the first took strictly 
positive and scientific views. 

But, with respect to all the less familiar occurrences 
which present themselves, uncultured man, no doubt, 
has always taken himself as the standard of compari- 
son, as the center and measure of the world ; nor could 
he well avoid doing so. And finding that his appar- 
ently uncaused will has a powerful effect in giving rise 



154 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

to many occurrences, he naturally enough ascribed 
other and greater events to other and greater volitions, 
and came to look upon the world and all that therein 
is, as the product of the volitions of persons like him- 
self, but stronger, and capable of being appeased or 
angered, as he himself might be soothed or irritated. 
Through such conceptions of the plan and w^orking 
of the universe all mankind have passed, or are passing. 
And we may now consider what has been the effect of 
the improvement of natural knowledge on the views 
of men who have reached this stage, and who have 
begun to cultivate natural knowledge with no desire 
but that of " increasing God's honor and bettering 
man's estate." 

For example, what could seem wiser, from a mere 
material point of view, more innocent, from a theo- 
logical one, to an ancient people, than that they should 
learn the exact succession of the seasons, as warnings 
for their husbandmen ; or the position of the stars, 
as guides to their rude navigators? But what has 
grown out of this search for natural knowledge of so 
merely useful a character? You all know the reply. 
Astronomy, — which of all sciences has filled men's 
minds with general ideas of a character most foreign 
to their daily experience, and has, more than any other, 
rendered it impossible for them to accept the beliefs 
of their fathers. Astronomy, — which tells them that 
this so vast and seemingly solid earth is but an atom 
among atoms, whirling, no man knows whither, 
through illimitable space ; which demonstrates that 
what we call the peaceful heaven above us, is but that 
space, filled by an infinitely subtle matter whose par- 
ticles are seething and surging, like the waves of an 



IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 155 

angry sea ; which opens up to us infinite regions where 
nothing is known, or ever seems to have been known, 
but matter and force, operating according to rigid 
rules ; which leads us to contemplate phenomena the 
very nature of which demonstrates that they must have 
had a beginning, and that they must have an end, but 
the very nature of which also proves that the beginning 
was, to our conceptions of time, infinitely remote, and 
that the end is as immeasurably distant. 

But it is not alone those who pursue astronomy who 
ask for bread and receive ideas. What more harmless 
than the attempt to lift and distribute water by pump- 
ing it ; what more absolutely and grossly utilitarian ? 
Yet out of pumps grew the discussions about Nature's 
abhorrence of a vacuum ; and then it was discovered 
that Nature does not abhor a vacuum, but that air 
has weight ; and that notion paved the way for the 
doctrine that all matter has weight, and that the force 
which produces weight is co-extensive with the uni- 
verse, — in short, to the theory of universal gravita- 
tion and endless force. While learning how to handle 
gases led to the discovery of oxygen, and to modern 
chemistry, and to the notion of the indestructibility of 
matter. 

Again, what simpler, or more absolutely practical, 
than the attempt to keep the axle of a wheel from 
heating when the wheel turns round very fast? How 
useful for carters and gig drivers to know something 
about this; and how good were it, if any ingenious 
person would find out the cause of such phenomena, 
and thence educe a general remedy for them. Such 
an ingenious person was Count Rumford; and he and 
his successors have landed us in the theory of the 



156 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

persistence, or indestructibility, of force. And in the 
infinitely minute, as in the infinitely great, the seekers 
after natural knowledge of the kinds called physical 
and chemical, have everywhere found a definite order 
and succession of events which seem never to be in- 
fringed. 

And how has it fared with " Physick " and Anat- 
omy? Have the anatomist, the physiologist, or the 
physician, whose business it has been to devote them- 
selves assiduously to that eminently practical and 
direct end, the alleviation of the sufferings of man- 
kind, — have they been able to confine their vision more 
absolutely to the strictly useful? I fear they are the 
worst offenders of all. For if the astronomer has set 
before us the infinite magnitude of space, and the prac- 
tical eternity of the duration of the universe ; if the 
physical and chemical philosophers have demonstrated 
the infinite minuteness of its constituent parts, and the 
practical eternity of matter and of force ; and if both 
have alike proclaimed the universality of a definite 
and predicable order and succession of events, the 
w^orkers in biology have not only accepted all these, 
but have added more startling theses of their own. 
For, as the astronomers discover in the earth no center 
of the universe, but an eccentric speck, so the natural- 
ists find man to be no center of the living world, but 
one amidst endless modifications of life; and as the 
astronomer observes the mark of practically endless 
time set upon the arrangements of the solar system 
so the student of life finds the records of ancient forms 
of existence peopling the world for ages, which, in 
relation to human experience, are infinite. 

Furthermore, the physiologist finds life to be as 



IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 157 

dependent for its manifestation on particular molecu- 
lar arrangements as any physical or chemical phenom- 
enon ; and wherever he extends his researches, fixed 
order and unchanging causation reveal themselves, as 
plainly as in the rest of Nature. 

Nor can I find that any other fate has awaited the 
germ of Religion. Arising, like all other kinds of 
knowledge, out of the action and interaction of man's 
mind, with that which is not man's mind, it has taken 
the intellectual coverings of Fetishism or Polytheism ; 
of Theism or Atheism ; of Superstition or Rational- 
ism. With these, and their relative merits and de- 
merits, I have nothing to do; but this it is needful 
for my purpose to say, that if the religion of the pres- 
ent differs from that of the past, it is because the 
theology of the present has become more scientific 
than that of the past ; because it has not only renounced 
idols of wood and idols of stone, but begins to see 
the necessity of breaking in pieces the idols built up of 
books and traditions and fine-spun ecclesiastical cob- 
webs: and of cherishing the noblest and most human 
of man's emotions, by worship " for the most part 
of the silent sort " at the altar of the Unknown. 

Such are a few of the new conceptions implanted in 
our minds by the improvement of natural knowledge. 
Men have acquired the ideas of the practically infinite 
extent of the universe and of its practical eternity ; 
they are familiar with the conception that our earth 
is but an infinitesimal fragment of that part of the 
universe which can be seen ; and that, nevertheless, its 
duration is, as compared with our standards of time, 
infinite. They have further acquired the idea that 
man is but one of innumerable forms of life now exist- 



158 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

ing on the globe, and that the present existences are 
but the last of an immeasurable series of predecessors. 
Moreover, every step they have made in natural 
knowledge has tended to extend and rivet in their 
minds the conception of a definite order of the uni- 
verse — which is embodied in what are called, by an 
unhappy metaphor, the laws of Nature — and to nar- 
row the range and loosen the force of men's belief in 
spontaneity, or in changes other than such as arise out 
of that definite order itself. 

Whether these ideas are well or ill founded is not 
the question. No one can deny that they exist, and 
have been the inevitable outgrowth of the improve- 
ment of natural knowledge. And if so, it cannot be 
doubted that they are changing the form of men's most 
cherished and most important convictions. 

And as regards the second point — the extent to 
which the improvement of natural knowledge has re- 
modeled and altered what may be termed the intel- 
lectual ethics of men, — what are among the moral 
convictions most fondly held by barbarous and semi- 
barbarous people? 

They are the convictions that authority is the sound- 
est basis of belief; that merit attaches to a readiness 
to believe; that the doubting disposition is a bad one, 
and skepticism a sin ; that when good authority has 
pronounced what is to be believed, and faith has ac- 
cepted it, reason has no further duty. There are many 
excellent persons who yet hold by these principles, and 
it is not my present business, or intention, to discuss 
their views. All I wish to bring clearly before your 
minds is the unquestionable fact, that the improve- 



IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 159 

ment of natural knowledge is effected by methods 
which directly give the lie to all these convictions, and 
assume the exact reverse of each to be true. 

The improver of natural knowledge absolutely re- 
fuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, 
skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one 
unpardonable sin. And it cannot be otherwise, for 
every great advance in natural knowledge has involved 
the absolute rejection of authority, the cherishing of 
the keenest skepticism, the annihilation of the spirit 
of blind faith; and the most ardent votary of science 
holds his firmest convictions, not because the men he 
most venerates hold them; not because their verity is 
testified by portents and wonders ; but because his ex- 
perience teaches him that whenever he chooses to bring 
these convictions into contact with their primary 
source. Nature — whenever he thinks fit to test them 
by appealing to experiment and to observation — 
Nature will confirm them. The man of science has 
learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by 
verification. 

Thus, without for a moment pretending to despise 
the practical results of the improvement of natural 
knowledge, and its beneficial influence on material 
civilization, it must, I think, be admitted that the great 
ideas, some of which I have indicated, and the ethical 
spirit which I have endeavored to sketch, in the few 
moments which remained at my disposal, constitute the 
real and permanent significance of natural knowledge. 

If these ideas be destined, as I believe they are, to 
be more and more firmly established as the world grows 
older ; if that spirit be fated, as I believe it is, to extend 
itself into all departments of human thought, and to 



i6o THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

become co-extensive with the range of knowledge ; if, 
as our race approaches its maturity, it discovers, as I 
beHeve it will, that there is but one kind of knowledge 
and but one method of acquiring it ; then we, who are 
still children, may justly feel it our highest duty to 
recognize the advisableness of improving natural 
knowledge, and so to aid ourselves and our successors 
in our course towards the noble goal which lies before 
mankind. 



XIV 

Science and the Applications of 
Science 

By John Tyndall ^ 

This, then, is the core of the whole matter as regards 
science. It must be cultivated for its own sake, for 
the pure love of truth, rather than for the applause 
or profit that it brings. And now my occupation in 
America is well-nigh gone. Still I will bespeak your 
tolerance for a few concluding remarks, in reference 
to the men who have bequeathed to us the vast body 
of knowledge of which I have sought to give you some 
faint idea in these lectures. What was the motive that 

1 This selection forms a part of the Conclusion of Tyndall's Six 
Lectures on Light which were delivered in 1872 and 1873 in Boston, 
New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, and were pub- 
lished in book form in 1873. 

John Tyndall, 1820-1893, was one of the best known English scientists 
and lecturers of his day. He became. Professor of Natural Science at 
the Royal Institution in 1853, and Director after the death of Faraday in 
1867. Among his best known books are Glaciers of the Alt>s, Heat as a 
Mode of Motion, and the volume on light from which this selection is 
taken. His lectures in America in 1872-3 were extremely popular and 
gained Tyndall about $13,000: this sum Tyndall left in the hands of 
trustees for the encouragement of American students of science. His 
first plan was to have the interest used to maintain two American stu- 
dents constantly through a four years' course at a German university. 
But in 1885, on the advice of his trustees, this plan was changed, and 
the money, which by this time had accumulated to about $32,000, was di- 
vided equally among Columbia College, Harvard University, and the 
University of Pennsylvania, to be used for the encouragement of the 
study of science in those institutions. — Editor. 

161 



i62 JOHN TYNDALL 

spurred them on? What urged them to those battles 
and those victories over reticent Nature, which have 
become the heritage of the human race? It is never 
to be forgotten that not one of those great investi- 
gators, from Aristotle down to Stokes and Kirchhoff, 
had any practical end in view, according to the ordi- 
nary definition of the word " practical." They did not 
propose to themselves money as an end, and knowl- 
edge as a means of obtaining it. For the most part, 
they nobly reversed this process, made knowledge their 
end, and such money as they possessed the means of 
obtaining it. 

We see to-day the issues of their work in a thousand 
practical forms, and this may be thought sufficient 
to justify, if not ennoble their efforts. But they did 
not work for such issues ; their reward was of a totally 
different kind. In what way different? We love 
clothes, we love luxuries, we love fine equipages, we 
love money, and any man who can point to these as 
the result of his efforts in life, justifies these results 
before all the world. In America and England, more 
especially, he is a " practical " man. But I would ap- 
peal confidently to this assembly whether such things 
exhaust the demands of human nature? The very 
presence here for six inclement nights of this great 
audience, embodying so much of the mental force and 
refinement of this vast city,^ is an answer to my ques- 
tion. I need not tell such an assembly that there are 
joys of the intellect as well as joys of the body, or 
that these pleasures of the spirit constituted the reward 

1 New York: for more than a decade no such weather had been ex- 
perienced. The snow was so deep that the ordinary means of locomotion 
were for a time suspended. 



SCIENCE AND ITS APPLICATIONS 163 

of our great investigators. Led on by the whisper- 
ings of natural truth, through pain and self-denial, 
they often pursued their work. With the ruling pas- 
sion strong in death, some of them, when no longer 
able to hold a pen, dictated to their friends the results 
of their labors, and then rested from them forever. 

Could we have seen these men at work, without 
any knowledge of the consequences of their work, 
what should we have thought of them? To the un- 
initiated, in their day, they might often appear as big 
children playing with soap-bubbles and other trifles. 
It is so to this hour. Could you watch the true in- 
vestigator — your Henry or your Draper, for ex- 
ample — in his laboratory, unless animated by his 
spirit, you could hardly understand what keeps him 
there. Many of the objects which rivet his attention 
might appear to you utterly trivial; and, if you were 
to ask him what is the use of his work, the chances 
are that you would confound him. He might not be 
able to express the use of it in intelligible terms. He 
might not be able to assure you that it will put a 
dollar into the pocket of any human being, living or 
to come. That scientific discovery may put not only 
dollars into the pockets of individuals, but millions 
into the exchequers of nations, the history of science 
amply proves ; but the hope of its doing so never was, 
and it never can be, the motive power of the investi- 
gator. 

I know that some risk is run in speaking thus before 
practical men. I know what De Tocqueville says of 
you. " The man of the North," he says, " has not only 
experience, but knowledge. He, however, does not 
care for science as a pleasure, and only embraces it 



i64 JOHN TYNDALL 

with avidity when it leads to useful applications." But 
what, I would ask, are the hopes of useful applications 
which have caused you so many times to fill this place, 
in spite of snow-drifts and biting cold? What, I may 
ask, is the origin of that kindness which drew me from 
my work in London to address you here, and which, if 
I permitted it, would send me home a millionaire? 
Not because I had taught you to make a single cent by 
science am I here to-night, but because I tried to the 
best of my ability to present science to the world as an 
intellectual good. Surely no two terms were ever so 
distorted and misapplied with reference to man, in his 
higher relations, as these terms useful and practical. 
Let us expand our definitions until they embrace all 
the needs of man, his highest intellectual needs inclu- 
sive. It is specially on this ground of its administer- 
ing to the higher needs of the intellect; it is mainly 
because I believe it to be wholesome, not only as a 
source of knowledge but as a means of discipline, 
that I urge the claims of science upon your attention. 

But with reference to material needs and joys, surely 
pure science has also a word to say. People sometimes 
speak as if steam had not been studied before James 
Watt, or electricity before Wheatstone and Morse; 
whereas, in point of fact. Watt and Wheatstone and 
Morse, with all their practicality, were the mere out- 
come of antecedent forces, which acted without refer- 
ence to practical ends. This also, I think, merits a 
moment's attention. You are delighted, and with good 
reason, with your electric telegraphs, proud of your 
steam engines and your factories, and charmed with 
the productions of photography. You see daily, with 
just elation, the creation of new forms of industry — 



SCIENCE AND ITS APPLICATIONS 165 

new powers of adding to the wealth and comfort of 
society. Industrial England is heaving with forces 
tending to this end; and the pulse of industry beats 
still stronger in the United States. And yet, when 
analyzed, what are industrial America and industrial 
England ? 

If you can tolerate freedom of speech on my part, 
I will answer this question by an illustration. Strip 
a strong arm, and regard the knotted muscles when 
the hand is clenched and the arm bent. Is this exhibi- 
tion of energy the work of the muscle alone? By no 
means. The muscle is the channel of an influence, 
without which it would be as powerless as a lump of 
plastic dough. It is the delicate unseen nerve that 
unlocks the power of the muscle. And without those 
filaments of genius, which have been shot like nerves 
through the body of society by the original discoverer, 
industrial America, and industrial England, would be 
very much in the condition of that plastic dough. 

At the present time there is a cry in England for 
technical education, and it is a cry in which the most 
commonplace intellect can join, its necessity is so 
obvious. But there is no cry for original investiga- 
tion. Still without this, as surely as the stream dwin- 
dles when the spring dies, so surely will " technical 
education " lose all force of growth, all power of re- 
production. Our great investigators have given us 
sufficient work for a time ; but if their spirit die out, 
we shall find ourselves eventually in the condition of 
those Chinese mentioned by De Tocqueville, who, hav- 
ing forgotten the scientific origin of what they did, 
were at length compelled to copy without variation 
the inventions of an ancestry wiser than themselves, 



i66 JOHN TYNDALL 

who had drawn their inspiration direct from Nature. 

Both England and America have reason to bear 
those things in mind, for the largeness and nearness of 
material results are only too likely to cause both coun- 
tries to forget the small spiritual beginnings of such re- 
sults, in the mind of the scientific discoverer. You 
multiply, but he creates. And if you starve him, or 
otherwise kill him — nay, if you fail to secure for 
him free scope and encouragement — you not only lose 
the motive power of intellectual progress, but infallibly 
sever yourselves from the springs of industrial life. 

What has been said of technical operations holds 
equally good for education, for here also the original 
investigator constitutes the fountain-head of knowledge. 
It belongs to the teacher to give this knowledge the 
requisite form; an honorable and often a difficult 
task. But it is a task which receives its final sanc- 
tification, when the teacher himself honestly tries 
to add a rill to the great stream of scientific discovery. 
Indeed, it may be doubted whether the real life of 
science can be fully felt and communicated by the 
man who has not himself been taught by direct com- 
munion with Nature. We may, it is true, have good 
and instructive lectures from men of ability, the whole 
of whose knowledge is second-hand, just as we may 
have good and instructive sermons from intellectually 
able and unregenerate men. But for that power of 
science, which corresponds to what the Puritan fathers 
would call experimental religion in the heart, you must 
ascend to the original investigator. 

To keep society as regards science in healthy play, 
three classes of workers are necessary : Firstly, the 
investigator of natural truth, whose vocation it is to 



SCIENCE AND ITS APPLICATIONS 167 

pursue that truth, and extend the field of discovery for 
the truth's own sake, and without reference to prac- 
tical ends. Secondly, the teacher of natural truth, 
whose vocation it is to give public diffusion to the 
knowledge already won by the discoverer. Thirdly, 
the applier of natural truth, whose vocation it is to 
make scientific knowledge available for the needs, com- 
forts, and luxuries of civilized life. These three 
classes ought to coexist and interact. Now, the popu- 
lar notion of science, both in this country and in Eng- 
land, often relates not to science strictly so called, but 
to the applications of science. Such applications, 
especially on this continent, are so astounding — they 
spread themselves so largely and umbrageously before 
the public eye — that they often shut out from view 
those workers who are engaged in the quieter and pro- 
founder business of original investigation. 

Take the electric telegraph as an example, which 
has been repeatedly forced upon my attention of late. 
I am not here to attenuate in the slightest degree the 
services of those who, in England and America, have 
given the telegraph a form so wonderfully fitted for 
public use. They earned a great reward, and they 
have received it. But I should be untrue to you and 
to myself if I failed to tell you that, however high 
in particular respects their claims and qualities may be, 
your practical men did not discover the electric tele- 
graph. The discovery of the electric telegraph im- 
plies the discovery of electricity itself, and the develop- 
ment of its laws and phenomena. Such discoveries 
are not made by practical men, and they never will be 
made by them, because their minds are beset by ideas 
which, though of the highest value from one point of 



i68 JOHN TYNDALL 

view, are not those which stimulate the original dis- 
coverer. 

The ancients discovered the electricity of amber; 
and Gilbert, in the year 1600, extended the discovery 
to other bodies. Then followed Boyle, Von Guericke, 
Gray, Canton, Du Fay, Kleist, Cunaeus, and your own 
Franklin. But their form of electricity, though tried, 
did not come into use for telegraphic purposes. Then 
appeared the great Italian Volta, who discovered the 
source of electricity which bears his name, and applied 
the most profound insight, and the most delicate ex- 
perimental skill, to its development. Then arose the 
man who added to the powers of his intellect all the 
graces of the human heart, Michael Faraday, the dis- 
coverer of the great domain of magneto-electricity. 
(Ersted discovered the deflection of the magnetic needle, 
and Arago and Sturgeon the magnetization of iron by 
the electric current. The voltaic circuit finally found 
its theoretic Newton in Ohm ; while Henry, of Prince- 
ton, who had the sagacity to recognise the merits of 
Ohm while they were still decried in his own country, 
was at this time in the van of experimental inquiry. 

In the works of these men you have all the materials 
employed at this hour, in all the forms of the elec- 
tric telegraph. Nay, more; Gauss, the celebrated 
astronomer, and Weber, the celebrated natural phil- 
osopher, both professors in the University of Gottin- 
gen, wishing to establish a rapid mode of communica- 
tion between the observatory and the physical cabinet 
of the university, did this by means of an electric tele- 
graph. Thus, before your practical men appeared 
upon the scene, the force had been discovered, its laws 
investigated and made sure, the most complete mastery 



SCIENCE AND ITS APPLICATIONS 169 

of its phenomena had been attained — nay, its appli- 
cability to telegraphic purposes demonstrated — by 
men whose sole reward for their labors was the noble 
excitement of research, and the joy attendant on the 
discovery of natural truth. 

Are we to ignore all this? We do so at our peril. 
For I say again that, behind all our practical applica- 
tions, there is a region of intellectual action to which 
practical men have rarely contributed, but from which 
they draw all their supplies. Cut them off from this 
region, and they become eventually helpless. In no 
case is the adage truer, " Other men labored, but ye 
are entered into their labors," than in the case of the 
discoverer and applier of natural truth. But now a 
word on the other side. While practical men are not 
the men to make the necessary antecedent discoveries, 
the cases are rare, though, in our day, not absent, in 
which the discoverer knows how to turn his labors to 
practical account. Different qualities of mind and 
habits of thought are usually needed in the two cases ; 
and while I wish to give emphatic utterance to the 
claims of those whose position, owing to the simple 
fact of their intellectual elevation, is often misunder- 
stood, I am not here to exalt the one class of workers 
at the expense of the other. They are the necessary 
complements of each other. But remember that one 
class is sure to be taken care of. All the material 
rewards of society are already within their reach, while 
that same society habitually ascribes to them intel- 
lectual achievements which were never theirs. This 
cannot but act to the detriment of those studies out of 
which, not only our knowledge of nature, but our pres- 
ent industrial arts themselves have sprung, and from 



170 JOHN TYNDALL 

which the rising genius of the country is incessantly 
tempted away. 

Pasteur, one of the most eminent members of the 
Institute of France, in accounting for the disastrous 
overthrow of his country and the predominance of 
Germany in the late war, expresses himself thus : 
" Few persons comprehend the real origin of the 
marvels of industry and the wealth of nations. I need 
no further proof of this than the employment more 
and more frequent in official language, and in writing 
of all sorts, of the erroneous expression applied sci- 
ence. The abandonment of scientific careers by men 
capable of pursuing them with distinction, was recently 
deplored in the presence of a minister of the greatest 
talent. The statesman endeavored to show that we 
ought not to be surprised at this result, because in our 
day the reign of theoretic science yielded place to 
that of applied science. Nothing could be more er- 
roneous than this opinion, nothing, I venture to say, 
more dangerous, even to practical life, than the conse- 
quences which might flow from these words. They 
have rested in my mind as a proof of the imperious 
necessity of reform in our superior education. There 
exists no category of the sciences, to which the name 
of applied science could be rightly given. IVe have 
science, and the applications of science, which are 
united together as the tree and its fruit." 

And Cuvier, the great comparative anatomist, writes 
thus upon the same theme : " These grand practical 
innovations are the mere applications of truths of a 
higher order, not sought with a practical intent, but 
pursued for their own sake, and solely through an 
ardor for knowledge. Those who applied them could 



SCIENCE AND ITS APPLICATIONS 171 

not have discovered them ; those who discovered them 
had no incHnation to pursue them to a practical end. 
Engaged in the high regions whither their thoughts 
had carried them, they hardly perceived these prac- 
tical issues, though born of their own deeds. These 
rising workshops, these peopled colonies, those ships 
which furrow the seas — this abundance, this luxury, 
this tumult — all this comes from discoverers in sci- 
ence, and it all remains strange to them. At the point 
where science merges into practice they abandon it ; 
it concerns them no more." 

When the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth 
Rock, and when Penn made his treaty with the Indians, 
the new-comers had to build their houses, to chasten 
the earth into cultivation, and to take care of their 
souls. In such a community science, in its more ab- 
stract forms, was not to be thought of. And at the 
present hour, when your hardy Western pioneers stand 
face to face with stubborn Nature, piercing the moun- 
tains and subduing the forest and the prairie, the pur- 
suit of science, for its own sake, is not to be expected. 
The first need of man is food and shelter; but a vast 
portion of this continent is already raised far beyond 
this need. The gentlemen of New York, Brooklyn, 
Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, 
have already built their houses, and very beautiful 
they are: they have also secured their dinners, to the 
excellence of which I can also bear testimony. They 
have, in fact, reached that precise condition of well- 
being and independence when a culture, as high as 
humanity has yet reached, may be justly demanded 
at their hands. They have reached that maturity, as 
possessors of wealth and leisure, when the investiga- 



172 JOHN TYNDALL 

tor of natural truth, for the truth's own sake, ought 
to find among them promoters and protectors. 

Among the many problems before them they have 
this to solve, whether a republic is able to foster the 
highest forms of genius. You are familiar with the 
writings of De Tocqueville, and must be aware of the 
intense sympathy which he felt for your institutions ; 
and this sympathy is all the more valuable from the 
philosophic candor with which he points not only your 
merits, but your defects and dangers. Now if I come 
here to speak of science in America in a critical and 
captious spirit, an invisible radiation from my words 
and manner will enable you to find me out, and will 
guide your treatment of me to-night. But if I in no 
unfriendly spirit — in a spirit, indeed, the reverse of 
unfriendly — venture to repeat before you what 
this great historian and analyst of democratic institu- 
tions said of America, I am persuaded that you will 
hear me out. He wrote some three and twenty years 
ago, and, perhaps, would not write the same to-day; 
but it will do nobody any harm to have his words 
repeated, and, if necessary, laid to heart. 

In a work published in 1850, De Tocqueville says: 
" It must be confessed that, among the civilized peoples 
of our age, there are few in which the highest sciences 
have made so little progress as in the United States." ^ 
He declares his conviction that, had you been alone in 
the universe, you would soon have discovered that you 
cannot long make progress' in practical science, with- 
out cultivating theoretic science at the same time. But, 
according to De Tocqueville, you are not thus alone. 

1 " De la Democratic en Amerique, etc.," tome ii. p. 36. [The French 
passage, quoted by Tyndall, is here omitted. — Editor.] 



SCIENCE AND ITS APPLICATIONS 173 

He refuses to separate America from its ancestral 
home ; and it is there, he contends, that you collect 
the treasures of the intellect, without taking the trouble 
to create them. 

De Tocqueville evidently doubts the capacity of a 
democracy to foster genius as it was fostered in the 
ancient aristocracies. " The future," he says, " will 
prove whether the passion for profound knowledge, 
so rare and so fruitful, can be born and developed so 
readily in democratic societies as in aristocracies. As 
for me," he continues, " I can hardly believe it." He 
speaks of the unquiet feverishness of democratic com- 
munities, not in times of great excitement, for such 
times may give an extraordinary impetus to ideas, but 
in times of peace. There is then, he says, " a small 
and uncomfortable agitation, a sort of incessant attri- 
tion of man against man, which troubles and distracts 
the mind without imparting to it either loftiness or 
animation." It rests with you to prove whether these 
things are necessarily so — whether scientific genius 
cannot find, in the midst of you, a tranquil home. 

I should be loth to gainsay so keen an observer and 
so profound a political writer, but, since my arrival in 
this country, I have been unable to see anything in the 
constitution of society, to prevent a student, with the 
root of the matter in him, from bestowing the most 
steadfast devotion on pure science. If great scientific 
results are not achieved in America, it is not to the 
small agitations of society that I should be disposed 
to ascribe the defect, but to the fact that the men 
among you who possess the endowments necessary for 
profound scientific inquiry, are laden with duties of 
administration, or tuition, so heavy as to be utterly 



174 JOHN TYNDALL 

incompatible with the continuous and tranquil medi- 
tation which original investigation demands. It may 
well be asked whether Henry would have been trans- 
formed into an administrator, or whether Draper 
would have forsaken science to write history, if the 
original investigator had been honored as he ought to 
be in this land. I hardly think they would. Still I 
do not imagine this state of things likely to last. In 
America there is a willingness on the part of indi- 
viduals to devote their fortunes, in the matter of edu- 
cation, to the service of the commonwealth, which is 
probably without a parallel elsewhere: and this wil- 
lingness requires but wise direction to enable you 
effectually to wipe away the reproach of De Tocque- 
ville. 

Your most difficult problem will be not to build insti- 
tutions, but to discover men. You may erect labora- 
tories and endow them ; you may furnish them with 
all the appliances needed for enquiry ; in so doing you 
are but creating opportunity for the exercise of powers 
which come from sources entirely beyond your reach. 
You cannot create genius by bidding for it. In biblical 
language, it is the gift of God ; and the most you could 
do, were your wealth, and your willingness to apply 
it, a million-fold what they are, would be to make sure 
that this glorious plant shall have the freedom, light, 
and warmth necessary for its development. We see 
from time to time a noble tree dragged down by para- 
sitic runners. These the gardener can remove, though 
the vital force of the tree itself may lie beyond him: 
and so, in many a case, you men of wealth can liberate 
genius from the hampering toils which the struggle for 
existence often casts around it. 



SCIENCE AND ITS APPLICATIONS 175 

Drawn by your kindness, I have come here to give 
these lectures, and now that my visit to America has 
become almost a thing of the past, I look back upon 
it as a memory without a single stain. No lecturer was 
ever rewarded as I have been. From this vantage- 
ground, however, let me remind you that the work of 
the lecturer is not the highest work; that, in science, 
the lecturer is usually the distributor of intellectual 
wealth amassed by better men. And though lecturing 
and teaching, in moderation, will in general promote 
their moral health, it is not salely, or even chiefly, as 
lecturers, but as investigators, that your highest men 
ought to be employed. You have scientific genius 
amongst you — not sown broadcast, believe me, it is 
sown thus nowhere — but still scattered here and there. 
Take all unnecessary impediments out of its way. 
Keep your sympathetic eye upon the originator of 
knowledge. Give him the freedom necessary for his 
researches, not overloading him, either with the duties 
of tuition or of administration, not demanding from 
him so-called practical results — above all things, 
avoiding that question which ignorance so often ad- 
dresses to genius, " What is the use of your work ? " 
Let him make truth his object, however unpractical 
for the time being it may appear. If you cast your 
bread thus upon the waters, then be assured it will 
return to you, though it may be after many days. 



XV 

Literature 

By John Henry Newman ^ 

Wishing to address you, Gentlemen, at the com- 
mencement of a new Session, I tried to find a subject 
for discussion, which might be at once suitable to the 
occasion, yet neither too large for your time, nor too 
minute or abtruse for your attention. I think I see one 
for my purpose in the very title of your Faculty. It is 
the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters. Now the ques- 
tion may arise as to what is meant by " Philosophy," 
and what is meant by " Letters." As to the other 
Faculties, the subject-matter which they profess is in- 
telligible, as soon as named, and beyond all dispute. 
We know what Science is, what Medicine, what Law, 

1 This discourse was the second in Newman's Lectures and Essays on 
University Subjects, published in 1859 and reprinted in 1873 as the 
second part of his Idea of a University. The lectures were delivered 
at the Catholic University of Dublin, of which Newman was Rector from 
1854 to 1858. This one is described by Newman as "A Lecture in the 
School of Philosophy and Letters." 

John Henry Newman, 1801-1890, was from 1822 to 1845 a Fellow of 
Oriel College, Oxford; he was one of the leaders of the Oxford Move- 
ment and an influential writer on Anglican theology. In 1845 came the 
crisis of his life: his researches into the theology of the Church of Eng- 
land left him with the conviction that her position was untenable, and in 
this year he became a member of the Roman Catholic Church. He pub- 
lished in 1864 his famous Apologia pro Vita Sua in reply to Charles 
Kingsley's attack upon his good faith. In 1879 he was made Cardinal. 
Although Newman is perhaps best known for his writing on theological 
questions, his connection with the ill-starred Catholic University of Dub- 
lin has left a few discourses on education which are a part of his finest 
work. — Editor. 

176 



LITERATURE 177 

and what Theology ; but we have not so much ease in 
determining what is meant by Philosophy and Letters. 
Each department of that twofold province needs ex- 
planation : it will be sufficient, on an occasion like this, 
to investigate one of them. Accordingly I shall select 
for remark the latter of the two, and attempt to de- 
termine what we are to understand by Letters or Liter- 
ature, in what Literature consists, and how it stands 
relatively to Science. 

Here, then, in the first place, I observe. Gentlemen, 
that Literature, from the derivation of the word, im- 
plies writing, not speaking; this, however, arises from 
the circumstance of the copiousness, variety, and pub- 
lic circulation of the matters of which it consists. 
What is spoken cannot outrun the range of the speak- 
er's voice, and perishes in the uttering. When words 
are in demand to express a long course of thought, 
when they have to be conveyed to the ends of the 
earth, or perpetuated for the benefit of posterity, they 
must be written down, that is, reduced to the shape of 
literature ; still, properly speaking, the terms, by which 
we denote this characteristic gift of man, belong to its 
exhibition by means of the voice, not of handwriting. 
It addresses itself, in its primary idea, to the ear, not 
to the eye. We call it the power of speech, we call it 
language, that is, the use of the tongue ; and, even 
when we write, we still keep in mind what was its 
original instrument, for we use freely such terms in our 
books as " saying,'' " speaking," " telling," " talking," 
" calling " ; we use the terms " phraseology " and 
" diction "; as if we were still addressing ourselves to 
the ear. 



178 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

Now I insist on this, because it shows that speech, 
and therefore hterature, which is its permanent record, 
is essentially a personal work. It is not some produc- 
tion or result, attained by the partnership of several 
persons, or by machinery, or by any natural process, 
but in its very idea it proceeds, and must proceed, 
from some one given individual. Two persons cannot 
be the authors of the sounds which strike our ear; 
and, as they cannot be speaking one and the same 
speech, neither can they be v^riting one and the same 
lecture or discourse, — which must certainly belong 
to some one person or other, and is the expression of 
that one person's ideas and feelings, — ideas and feel- 
ings personal to himself, though others may have par- 
allel and similar ones, — proper to himself, in the 
same sense as his voice, his air, his countenance, his 
carriage, and his action, are personal. In other words, 
Literature expresses, not objective truth, as it is called, 
but subjective; not things, but thoughts. 

Now this doctrine will become clearer by consider- 
ing another use of words, which does relate to objec- 
tive truth, or to things; which relates to matters, not 
personal, not subjective to the individual, but which, 
even were there no individual man in the whole world 
to know them or to talk about them, would exist still. 
Such objects become the matter of Science, and words 
indeed are used to express them, but such words are 
rather symbols than language, and however many we 
use, and however we may perpetuate them by writing, 
we never could make any kind of literature out of 
them, or call them by that name. Such, for instance, 
would be Euclid's Elements; they relate to truths 
universal and eternal; they are not mere thoughts. 



LITERATURE 179 

but things : they exist in themselves, not by virtue of 
our understanding them, not in dependence upon our 
will, but in what is called the nature of things, or at 
least on conditions external to us. The words, then, 
in which they are set forth are not language, speech, 
literatyre, but rather, as I have said, symbols. And, 
as a proof of it, you will recollect that it is possible, 
nay usual, to set forth the propositions of Euclid in 
algebraical notation, which, as all would admit, has 
nothing to do with literature. What is true of mathe- 
matics is true also of every study, so far forth as it is 
scientific; it makes use of words as the mere vehicle 
of things, and is thereby withdrawn from the province 
of literature. Thus metaphysics, ethics, law, political 
economy, chemistry, theology, cease to be literature in 
the same degree as they are capable of a seveTe scien- 
tific treatment. And hence it is that Aristotle's works 
on the one hand, though at first sight literature, ap- 
proach in character, at least a great number of them, 
to mere science ; for even though the things which he 
treats of and exhibits may not always be real and 
true, yet he treats them as if they were, not as if they 
were the thoughts of his own mind ; that is, he treats 
them scientifically. On the other hand, Law or Nat- 
ural History has before now been treated by an author 
with so much of coloring derived from his own mind 
as to become a sort of literature ; this is especially 
seen in the instance of Theology, when it takes the 
shape of Pulpit Eloquence. It is seen too in historical 
composition, which becomes a mere specimen of chro- 
nology, or a chronicle, when divested of the philoso- 
phy, the skill, or the party and personal feelings of the 
particular writer. Science, then, has to do with things, 



i8o JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

literature with tlioughts; science is universal, litera- 
ture is personal; science uses words merely as sym- 
bols, but literature uses language in its full compass, 
as including phraseology, idiom, style, composition, 
rhythm, eloquence, and whatever other properties are 
included in it. 

Let us then put aside the scientific use of words, 
when we are to speak of language and literature. 
Literature is the personal use or exercise of language. 
That this is so is further proved from the fact that 
one author uses it so differently from another. Lan- 
guage itself in its very origination would seem to be 
traceable to individuals. Their peculiarities have given 
it its character. We are often able in fact to trace par- 
ticular phrases or idioms to individuals ; we know the 
history of their rise. Slang surely, as it is called, 
comes of, and breathes of the personal. The connec- 
tion between the force of words in particular lan- 
guages and the habits and sentiments of the nations 
speaking them has often been pointed out. And, while 
the many use language as they find it, the man of 
genius uses it indeed, but subjects it withal to his own 
purposes, and moulds it according to his own pecul- 
iarities. The throng and succession of ideas, thoughts, 
feelings, imaginations, aspirations, which pass within 
him, the abstractions, the juxtapositions, the compari- 
sons, the discriminations, the conceptions, which are 
so original in him, his views of external things, his 
judgments upon life, manners, and history, the ex- 
ercises of his wit, of his humor, of his depth, of his 
sagacity, all these innumerable and incessant creations, 
the very pulsation and throbbing of his intellect, does 
he image forth, to all does he give utterance, in a cor- 



LITERATURE i8i 

responding language, which is as multiform as this 
inward mental action itself and analogous to it, the 
faithful expression of his intense personality, attend- 
ing on his own inward world of thought as its very 
shadow : so that we might as well say that one man's 
shadow is another's as that the style of a really gifted 
mind can belong to any but himself. It follows him 
about as a shadow. His thought and feeling are per- 
sonal, and so his language is personal. 

Thought and speech are inseparable from each 
other. Matter and expression are parts of one : style is 
a thinking out into language. This is what I have been 
laying down, and this is literature; not things, not the 
verbal symbols of things; not on the other hand mere 
words; but thoughts expressed in language. Call to 
mind. Gentlemen, the meaning of the Greek word which 
expresses this special prerogative of man over the 
feeble intelligence of the inferior animals. It is called 
Logos : what does Logos mean ? it stands both for 
reason and for speech, and it is difficult to say which 
it means more properly. It means both at once : why? 
because really they cannot be divided, — because they 
are in a true sense one. When we can separate light 
and illumination, life and motion, the convex and the 
concave of a curve, then will it be possible for thought 
to tread speech under foot, and to hope to do without 
it — then will it be conceivable that the vigorous and 
fertile intellect should renounce its own double, its 
instrument of expression, and the channel of its specu- 
lations and emotions. 

Critics should consider this view of the subject be- 
fore they lay down such canons of taste as the writer 



1 82 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

whose pages I have quoted.^ Such men as he is con- 
sider fine writing to be an addition from without to 
the matter treated of, — a sort of ornament superin- 
duced, or a kixury indulged in, by those who have 
time and inchnation for such vanities. They speak as 
if one man could do the thought, and another the 
style. We read in Persian travels of the way in which 
young gentlemen go to work in the East, when they 
would engage in correspondence with those who inspire 
them with hope or fear. They cannot write one sen- 
tence themselves; so they betake themselves to the 
professional letter-writer. They confide to him the ob- 
ject they have in view. They have a point to gain 
from a superior, a favor to ask, an evil to deprecate; 
they have to approach a man in power, or to make 
court to some beautiful lady. The professional man 
manufactures words for them, as they are wanted, as 
a stationer sells them paper, or a schoolmaster might 
cut their pens. Thought and word are, in their con- 
ception, two things, and thus there is a division of 
labor. The man of thought comes to the man of 
words; and the man of words, duly instructed in the 
thought, dips the pen of desire into the ink of devot- 
edness, and proceeds to spread it over the page of 
desolation. Then the nightingale of affection is heard 
to warble to the rose of loveliness, while the breeze of 
anxiety plays around the brow of expectation. This 
is what the Easterns are said to consider fine writing; 
and it seems pretty much the idea of the school of 
critics to whom I have been referring. 

1 The reference is to a passage from Sterne's Sermons quoted by New- 
man earlier in the lecture, but here omitted. The context makes the 
point to the omitted passage sufficienly clear. — Editor. 



LITERATURE 183 

We have an instance in literary history of this very 
proceeding nearer home, in a great University, in the 
latter years of the last century. I have referred to it 
before now in a public lecture elsewhere ; ^ but it is 
too much in point here to be omitted. A learned Ara- 
bic scholar had to deliver a set of lectures before its 
doctors and professors on an historical subject in which 
his reading had lain. A linguist is conversant with 
science rather than with literature; but this gentle- 
man felt that his lectures must not be without a style. 
Being of the opinion of the Orientals, with whose 
writings he was familiar, he determined to buy a style. 
He took the step of engaging a person, at a price, to 
turn the matter which he had got together into orna- 
mental English. Observe, he did not wish for mere 
grammatical English, but for an elaborate, preten- 
tious style. An artist was found in the person of a 
country curate, and the job was carried out. His lec- 
tures remain to this day, in their own place in the 
protracted series of annual Discourses to which they 
belong, distinguished amid a number of heavyish com- 
positions by the rhetorical and ambitious diction for 
which he went into the market. This learned divine, 
indeed, and the author I have quoted, differ from each 
other in the estimate they respectively form of liter- 
ary composition ; but they agree together in this, — 
in considering such composition a trick and a trade ; 
they put it on a par with the gold plate and the flowers 
and the music of a banquet, which do not make the 
viands better, but the entertainment more pleasurable; 
as if language were the hired servant, the mere mis- 

1 " Position of Catholics in England," pp. 101-2. 



i84 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

tress of the reason, and not the lawful wife in her own 
house. 

But can they really think that Homer, or Pindar, 
or Shakespeare, or Dryden, or Walter Scott, were 
accustomed to aim at diction for its own sake, instead 
of being inspired with their subject, and pouring forth 
beautiful words because they had beautiful thoughts? 
this is surely too great a paradox to be borne. Rather, 
it is the fire within the author's breast which overflows 
in the torrent of his burning, irresistible eloquence; 
it is the poetry of his inner soul, which relieves itself 
in the Ode or the Elegy ; and his mental attitude and 
bearing, the beauty of his moral countenance, the force 
and keenness of his logic, are imaged in the tenderness, 
or energy, or richness of his language. Nay, according 
to the well-known line, " facit indignatio versus; " 
not the words alone, but even the rhythm, the metre, 
the verse, will be the contemporaneous offspring of the 
emotion or imagination which possesses him. " Poeta 
nascitur, non fit," says the proverb; and this is in 
numerous instances true of his poems, as well as of 
himself. They are born, not framed ; they are a strain 
rather than a composition; and their perfection is the 
monument, not so much of his skill as of his power. 
And this is true of prose as well as of verse in its 
degree : who will not recognize in the vision of Mirza 
a delicacy and beauty of style which is very difficult to 
describe, but which is felt to be in exact correspondence 
to the ideas of which it is the expression? 

And, since the thoughts and reasonings of an author 
have, as I have said, a personal character, no wonder 
that his style is not only the image of his subject, but 



LITERATURE 185 

of his mind. That pomp of language, that full and 
tuneful diction, that felicitousness in the choice and 
exquisiteness in the collocation of words, which to pro- 
saic writers seem artificial, is nothing else but the mere 
habit and way of a lofty intellect. Aristotle, in his 
sketch of the magnanimous man, tells us that his voice 
is deep, his motions slow, and his stature commanding. 
In like manner, the elocution of a great intellect is 
great. His language expresses, not only his great 
thoughts, but his great self. Certainly he might use 
fewer words than he uses ; but he fertilizes his sim- 
plest ideas, and germinates into a multitude of details, 
and prolongs the march of his sentences, and sweeps 
round to the full diapason of his harmony, as if /crSet 
ya'iMv, rejoicing in his own vigor and richness of re- 
source. I say, a narrow critic will call it verbiage, 
when really it is a sort of fulness of heart, parallel to 
that which makes the merry boy whistle as he walks, 
or the strong man, like the smith in the novel, flourish 
his club when there is no one to fight with. 

Shakespeare furnishes us with frequent instances of 
this peculiarity, and all so beautiful, that it is difficult 
to select for quotation. For instance, in Macbeth: — 

" Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased. 
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, 
Raze out the written troubles of the brain, 
And, with some sweet obhvious antidote, 
Cleanse the foul bosom of that perilous stuff, 
Which weighs upon the heart?" 

Here a simple idea, by a process which belongs to 
the orator rather than to the poet, but still comes from 
the native vigor of genius, is expanded into a many- 
membered period. 



i86 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

The following from Hamlet is of the same kind : — 

" 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, 
Nor customary suits of solemn black, 
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath, 
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye. 
Nor the dejected haviour of the visage. 
Together with all forms, modes, shows of grief, 
That can denote me truly." 

Now, if such declamation, for declamation it is, how- 
ever noble, be allowable in a poet, whose genius is so 
far removed from pompousness or pretence, much more 
is it allowable in an orator, whose very province it is 
to put forth words to the best advantage he can. Cicero 
has nothing more redundant in any part of his writings 
than these passages from Shakespeare. No lover then 
at least of Shakespeare may fairly accuse Cicero of gor- 
geousness of phraseology or diffuseness of style. Nor 
will any sound critic be tempted to do so. As a certain 
unaffected neatness and propriety and grace of diction 
may be required of any author who lays claim to be a 
classic, for the same reason that a certain attention to 
dress is expected of every gentleman, so to Cicero may 
be allowed the privilege of the " os magna sonaturum," 
of which the ancient critic speaks. His copious, majes- 
tic, musical flow of language, even if sometimes beyond 
what the subject-matter demands, is never out of keep- 
ing with the occasion or with the speaker. It is the 
expression of lofty sentiments in lofty sentences, the 
" mens magna in corpore magno." It is the develop- 
ment of the inner man. Cicero vividly realized the 
status of a Roman senator and statesman, and the 
" pride of place " of Rome, in all the grace and gran- 
deur which attached to her; and he imbibed, and be- 



LITERATURE 187 

came, what he admired. As the exploits of Scipio or 
Pompey are the expression of this greatness in deed, 
so the language of Cicero is the expression of it in 
word. And, as the acts of the Roman ruler or soldier 
represent to us, in a manner special to themselves, the 
characteristic magnanimity of the lords of the earth, 
so do the speeches or treatises of her accomplished 
orator bring it home to our imaginations as no other 
writing could do. Neither Livy, nor Tacitus, nor Ter- 
ence, nor Seneca, nor Pliny, nor Quintilian, is an 
adequate spokesman for the Imperial City. They write 
Latin ; Cicero writes Roman. 

You will say that Cicero's language is undeniably 
studied, but that Shakespeare's is as undeniably natural 
and spontaneous ; and that this is what is meant, when 
the Classics are accused of being mere artists of words. 
Here we are introduced to a further large question, 
which gives me the opportunity of anticipating a mis- 
apprehension of my meaning. I observe, then, that, not 
only is that lavish richness of style, which I have no- 
ticed in Shakespeare, justifiable on the principles which 
I have been laying down, but, what is less easy to re- 
ceive, even elaborateness in composition is no mark of 
trick or artifice in an author. Undoubtedly the works 
of the Classics, particularly the Latin, are elaborate ; 
they have cost a great deal of time, care, and trouble. 
They have had many rough copies ; I grant it. I grant 
also that there are writers of name, ancient and mod- 
ern, who really are guilty of the absurdity of making 
sentences, as the very end of their literary labor. 
Such was Isocrates ; such were some of the sophists ; 
they were set on words, to the neglect of thoughts or 



i88 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

things; I cannot defend them. If I must give an Eng- 
lish instance of this fault, much as I love and revere 
the personal character and intellectual vigor of Dr. 
Johnson, I cannot deny that his style often outruns 
the sense and the occasion, and is w^anting in that sim- 
plicity which is the attribute of genius. Still, granting 
all this, I cannot grant, notwithstanding, that genius 
never need take pains, — that genius may not improve 
by practice, — that it never incurs failures, and suc- 
ceeds the second time, — that it never finishes off at 
leisure what it has thrown ofif in the outline at a stroke. 
Take the instance of the painter or the sculptor; he 
has a conception in his mind which he wishes to repre- 
sent in the medium of his art ; — the Madonna and 
Child, or Innocence, or Fortitude, or some historical 
character or event. Do you mean to say he does not 
study his subject? does he not make sketches? does he 
not even call them " studies " ? does he not call his 
workroom a studio? is he not ever designing, rejecting, 
adopting, correcting, perfecting? Are not the first at- 
tempts of Michael Angelo and Raffaelle extant, in the 
case of some of their most celebrated compositions? 
Will any one say that the Apollo Belvedere is not a 
conception patiently elaborated into its proper perfec- 
tion ? These departments of taste are, according to the 
received notions of the world, the very province of gen- 
ius, and yet we call them arts; they are the " Fine 
Arts." Why may not that be true of literary compo- 
sition which is true of painting, sculpture, architecture, 
and music ? Why may not language be wrought as well 
as the clay of the modeller? why may not words be 
worked up as well as colors? why should not skill in 
diction be simply subservient and instrumental to the 



LITERATURE 189 

great prototypal ideas which are the contemplation of 
a Plato or a Virgil ? Our greatest poet tells us, 

" The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, 
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven. 
And, as imagination bodies forth 
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
Turns them to shapes, and gives tO airy nothing 
A local habitation and a name." 

Now, is it wonderful that that pen of his should 
sometimes be at fault for a while, — that it should 
pause, write, erase, re-write, amend, complete, before he 
satisfies himself that his language has done justice to 
the conceptions which his mind's eye contemplated? 

In this point of view, doubtless, many or most writers 
are elaborate ; and those certainly not the least whose 
style is furthest removed from ornament, being simple 
and natural, or vehement, or severely business-like and 
practical. Who so energetic and manly as Demos- 
thenes? Yet he is said to have transcribed Thucydides 
many times over in the formation of his style. Who so 
gracefully natural as Herodotus? yet his very dialect 
is not his own, but chosen for the sake of the perfection 
of his narrative. Who exhibits such happy negligence 
as our own Addison? yet artistic fastidiousness was so 
notorious in his instance that the report has got abroad, 
truly or not, that he was too late in his issue of an 
important state-paper, from his habit of revision and 
recomposition. Such great authors were working by a 
model which was before the eyes of their intellect, and 
they were laboring to say what they had to say, in 
such a way as would most exactly and suitably express 
it. It is not wonderful that other authors, whose style 
is not simple, should be instances of a similar literary 



I90 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

diligence. Virgil wished his yEneid to be burned, elab- 
orate as is its composition, because he felt it needed 
more labor still, in order to make it perfect. The 
historian Gibbon in the last century is another instance 
in point. You must not suppose I am going to recom- 
mend his style for imitation, any more than his prin- 
ciples; but I refer to him as the example of a writer 
feeling the task which lay before him, feeling that he 
had to bring out into words for the comprehension of 
his readers a great and complicated scene, and wishing 
that those words should be adequate to his undertak- 
ing. I think he wrote the first chapter of his History 
three times over; it was not that he corrected or im- 
proved the first copy ; but he put his first essay, and 
then his second, aside — he recast his matter, till he 
had hit the precise exhibition of it which he thought 
demanded by his subject. 

Now in all these instances, I wish you to observe, 
that what I have admitted about literary workmanship 
differs from the doctrine which I am opposing in this, 
— that the mere dealer in words cares little or nothing 
for the subject which he is embellishing, but can paint 
and gild anything whatever to order ; whereas the art- 
ist, whom I am acknowledging, has his great or rich 
visions before him, and his only aim is to bring out 
what he thinks or what he feels in a way adequate to 
the thing spoken of, and appropriate to the speaker. 

The illustration which I have been borrowing from 
the Fine Arts will enable me to go a step further. I 
have been showing the connection of the thought with 
the language in literary composition ; and in doing so 
I have exposed the unphilosophical notion, that the 



LITERATURE 191 

language was an extra which could be dispensed with, 
and provided to order according to the demand. But 
I have not yet brought out, what immediately follows 
from this, and which was the second point which I 
had to show, viz., that to be capable of easy transla- 
tion is no test of the excellence of a composition. If 
I must say what I think, I should lay down, with little 
hesitation, that the truth was almost the reverse of this 
doctrine. Nor are many words required to show it. 
Such a doctrine, as is contained in the passage of the 
author whom I quoted when I began, goes upon the 
assumption that one language is just like another lan- 
guage, — that every language has all the ideas, turns 
of thought, delicacies of expression, figures, associa- 
tions, abstractions, points of view, which every other 
language has. Now, as far as regards Science, it is 
true that all languages are pretty much alike for the 
purposes of Science ; but even in this respect some are 
more suitable than others, which have to coin words, 
or to borrow them, in order to express scientific ideas. 
But if languages are not all equally adapted even to 
furnish symbols for those universal and eternal truths 
in which Science consists, how can they reasonably be 
expected to be all equally rich, equally forcible, equally 
musical, equally exact, equally happy in expressing the 
idiosyncratic peculiarities of thought of some original 
and fertile mind, who has availed himself of one of 
them ? A great author takes his native language, mas- 
ters it, partly throws himself into it, partly moulds 
and adapts it, and pours out his multitude of ideas 
through the variously ramified and delicately minute 
channels of expression which he has found or framed : 
— does it follow that this his personal presence (as it 



192 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

may be called) can forthwith be transferred to every 
other language under the sun? Then may we reason- 
ably maintain that Beethoven's piano music is not 
really beautiful, because it cannot be played on the 
hurdy-gurdy. Were not this astonishing doctrine main- 
tained by persons far superior to the writer whom I 
have selected for animadversion, I should find it diffi- 
cult to be patient under a gratuitous extravagance. 
It seems that a really great author must admit of 
translation, and that we have a test of his excellence 
when he reads to advantage in a foreign language 
as well as in his own. Then Shakespeare is a genius 
because he can be translated into German, and not 
a genius because he cannot be translated into French. 
Then the multiplication-table is the most gifted of all 
conceivable compositions, because it loses nothing by 
translation, and can hardly be said to belong to any 
one language whatever. Whereas I should rather have 
conceived that, in proportion as ideas are novel and 
recondite, they would be difficult to put into words, 
and that the very fact of their having insinuated them- 
selves into one language would diminish the chance of 
that happy accident being repeated in another. In the 
language of savages you can hardly express any idea 
or act of the intellect at all : is the tongue of the 
Hottentot or Esquimaux to be made the measure of 
the genius of Plato, Pindar, Tacitus, St. Jerome, 
Dante, or Cervantes? 

Let us recur, I say, to the illustration of the Fine 
Arts. I suppose you can express ideas in painting 
which you cannot express in sculpture; and the more 
an artist is of a painter, the less he is hkely to be of 
a sculptor. The more he commits his genius to the 



LITERATURE 193 

methods and conditions of his own art, the less he will 
be able to throw himself into the circumstances of 
another. Is the genius of Fra Angelico, of Francia, or 
of Raffaelle disparaged by the fact that he was able 
to do that in colors which no man that ever lived, 
which no Angel, could achieve in wood? Each of the 
Fine Arts has its own subject-matter; from the nature 
of the case you can do in one what you cannot do in 
another ; you can do in painting what you cannot do 
in carving; you can do in oils what you cannot do in 
fresco; you can do in marble what you cannot do in 
ivory ; you can do in wax what you cannot do in bronze. 
Then, I repeat, applying this to the case of languages, 
why should not genius be able to do in Greek what it 
cannot do in Latin? and why are its Greek and Latin 
works defective because they will not turn into Eng- 
lish? That genius, of which we are speaking, did not 
make English ; it did not make all languages, present, 
past, and future ; it did not make the laws of any 
language: why is it to be judged of by that in which 
it had no part, over which it has no control ? 

I shall then merely sum up what I have said, and 
come to a conclusion. Reverting, then, to my original 
question, what is the meaning of Letters, as contained. 
Gentlemen, in the designation of your Faculty, I have 
answered, that by Letters or Literature is meant the 
expression of thought in language, where by " thought " 
I mean the ideas^ feelings, views, reasonings, and other 
operations of the human mind. And the Art of Letters 
is the method by which a speaker or writer brings out 
in words, worthy of his subject, and sufficient for his 
audience or readers, the thoughts which impress him. 



194 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

Literature, then, is of a personal character; it consists 
in the enunciations and teachings of those who have 
a right to speak as representatives of their kind, and 
in whose words their brethren find an interpretation of 
their own sentiments, a record of their own experience, 
and a suggestion for their own judgments. A great 
author, Gentlemen, is not one who merely has a copia 
verhorum, whether in prose or verse, and can, as it 
were, turn on at his will any number of splendid 
phrases and swelling sentences ; but he is one who has 
something to say and knows how to say it. I do not 
claim for him, as such, any great depth of thought, 
or breadth of view, or philosophy, or sagacity, or know- 
ledge of human nature, or experience of human life, 
though these additional gifts he may have, and the 
more he has of them the greater he is ; but I ascribe 
to him, as his characteristic gift, in a large sense the 
faculty of Expression, He is master of the twofold 
Logos, the thought and the word, distinct, but insepa- 
rable from each other. He may, if so be, elaborate his 
compositions, or he may pour out his improvisations, 
but in either case he has but one aim, which he keeps 
steadily before him, and is conscientious and single- 
minded in fulfilling. That aim is to give forth what 
he has within him ; and from his very earnestness it 
comes to pass that, whatever be the splendor of his 
diction or the harmony of his periods, he has with him 
the charm of an incommunicable simplicity. What- 
ever be his subject, high or low, he treats it suitably 
and for its own sake. If he is a poet, " nil molitur 
inepte." If he is an orator, then too he speaks, not 
only " distincte " and " splendide," but also " apte." 
His page is the lucid mirror of his mind and life — 



LITERATURE 195 

" Quo fit, ut omnis 
Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella 
Vita senis." 

He writes passionately, because he feels keenly ; for- 
cibly, because he conceives vividly ; he sees too clearly 
to be vague ; he is too serious to be otiose ; he can ana- 
lyze his subject, and therefore he is rich ; he embraces 
it as a whole and in its parts, and therefore he is con- 
sistent; he has a firm hold of it, and therefore he is 
luminous. When his imagination wells up, it overflows 
in ornament ; when his heart is touched, it thrills along 
his verse. He always has the right word for the right 
idea, and never a word too much. If he is brief, it is 
because few words suffice ; when he is lavish of them, 
still each word has its mark, and aids, not embarrasses, 
the vigorous march of his elocution. He expresses what 
all feel, but all cannot say ; and his sayings pass into 
proverbs among his people, and his phrases become 
household words and idioms of their daily speech, 
which is tesselated with the rich fragments of his lan- 
guage, as we see in foreign lands the marbles of Roman 
grandeur worked into the walls and pavements of 
modern palaces. 

Such pre-eminently is Shakespeare among ourselves ; 
such pre-eminently Virgil among the Latins; such in 
their degree are all those writers who in every nation 
go by the name of Classics. To particular nations they 
are necessarily attached from the circumstance of 
the variety of tongues, and the peculiarities of 
each ; but so far they have a catholic and ecumenical 
character, that what they express is common to the 
whole race of man, and they alone are able to 
express it. 



196 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 

If then the power of speech is a gift as great as any 
that can be named, — if the origin of language is by 
many philosophers even considered to be nothing short 
of divine, — if by means of words the secrets of the 
heart are brought to light, pain of soul is relieved, hid- 
den grief is carried off, sympathy conveyed, counsel 
imparted, experience recorded, and wisdom perpetuated, 
— if by great authors the many are drawn up into 
unity, national character is fixed, a people speaks, the 
past and the future, the East and the West are 
brought into communication with each other, — if such 
men are, in a word, the spokesmen and prophets of the 
human family, — it will not answer to make light of 
Literature or to neglect its study; rather we may be 
sure that, in proportion as we master it in whatever 
language, and imbibe its spirit, we shall ourselves be- 
come in our own measure the ministers of like benefits 
to others, be they many or few, be they in the obscurer 
or the more distinguished walks of life, — who are 
united to us by social ties, and are within the sphere of 
our personal influence. 



XVI 

Science and Culture 

By Thomas Henry Huxley ^ 

Six years ago, as some of my present hearers may 
remember, I had the privilege of addressing a large 
assemblage of the inhabitants of this city, who had 
gathered together to do honor to the memory of their 
famous townsman, Joseph Priestley ; and, if any satis- 
faction attaches to posthumous glory, we may hope 
that the manes of the burnt-out philosopher were then 
finally appeased. 

No man, however, who is endowed with a fair share 
of common-sense, and not more than a fair share of 
vanity, will identify either contemporary or posthu- 
mous fame with the highest good ; and Priestley's life 
leaves no doubt that he, at any rate, set a much higher 
value upon the advancement of knowledge, and the 
promotion of that freedom of thought which is at 
once the cause and the consequence of intellectual 
progress. 

Hence I am disposed to think that, if Priestley could 
be amongst us to-day, the occasion of our meeting 
would afford him even greater pleasure than the pro- 
ceedings which celebrated the centenary of his chief 
discovery. The kindly heart would be moved, the 
high sense of social duty would be satisfied, by the 

1 See Note to Essay XIII. 
197 



198 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

spectacle of well-earned wealth, neither squandered in 
tawdry luxury and vainglorious show, nor scattered 
with the careless charity which blesses neither him that 
gives nor him that takes, but expended in the execu- 
tion of a well-considered plan for the aid of present 
and future generations of those who are willing to 
help themselves. 

We shall all be of one mind thus far. But it is 
needful to share Priestley's keen interest in physical 
science; and to have learned, as he had learned, the 
value of scientific training in fields of inquiry appar- 
ently far remote from physical science ; in order to 
appreciate, as he would have appreciated, the value of 
the noble gift which Sir Josiah Mason has bestowed 
upon the inhabitants of the Midland district. 

For us children of the nineteenth century, however, 
the establishment of a college under the conditions of 
Sir Josiah INIason's Trust, has a significance apart 
from any which it could have possessed a hundred 
years ago. It appears to be an indication that we are 
reaching the crisis of the battle, or rather of the long 
series of battles, which have been fought over educa- 
tion in a campaign which began long before Priestley's 
time, and will probably not be finished just yet. 

In the last century, the combatants were the cham- 
pions of ancient literature on the one side, and those of 
modern literature on the other; but, some thirty years 
ago, the contest became complicated by the appearance 
of a third army, ranged round the banner of Physical 
Science. 

I am not aware that any one has authority to speak 
in the name of this new host. For it must be admitted 
to be somewhat of a guerilla force, composed largely 



SCIENCE AND CULTURE 199 

of irregulars, each of whom fights pretty much for 
his own hand. But the impressions of a full private, 
who has seen a good deal of service in the ranks, 
respecting the present position of affairs and the con- 
ditions of a permanent peace, may not be devoid of 
interest ; and I do not know that I could make a better 
use of the present opportunity than by laying them 
before you. 

From the time that the first suggestion to introduce 
physical science into ordinary education was timidly 
whispered, until now, the advocates of scientific educa- 
tion have met with opposition of two kinds. On the 
one hand, they have been pooh-poohed by the men of 
business who pride themselves on being the representa- 
tives of practicality ; while, on the other hand, they 
have been excommunicated by the classical scholars, in 
their capacity of Levites in charge of the ark of culture 
and monopolists of liberal education. 

The practical men believed that the idol whom they 
worship — rule of thumb — has been the source of the 
past prosperity, and will suffice for the future welfare 
of the arts and manufactures. They were of opinion 
that science is speculative rubbish ; that theory and 
practice have nothing to do with one another; and that 
the scientific habit of mind is an impediment, rather 
than an aid, in the conduct of ordinary affairs. 

I have used the past tense in speaking of the prac- 
tical men — for although they were very formidable 
thirty years ago, I am not sure that the pure species 
has not been extirpated. In fact, so far as mere argu- 
ment goes, they have been subjected to such a feu d'en- 
fer that it is a miracle if any have escaped. But I have 



200 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

remarked that your typical practical man has an unex- 
pected resemblance to one of Milton's angels. His 
spiritual wounds, such as are inflicted by logical wea- 
pons, may be as deep as a well and as wide as a church 
door, but beyond shedding a few drops of ichor, 
celestial or otherwise, he is no whit the worse. So, if 
any of these opponents be left, I will not waste time in 
vain repetition of the demonstrative evidence of the 
practical value of science ; but knowing that a parable 
will sometimes penetrate where syllogisms fail to effect 
an entrance, I will offer a story for their consideration. 

Once upon a time, a boy, with nothing to depend 
upon but his own vigorous nature, was thrown into the 
thick of the struggle for existence in the midst of a 
great manufacturing population. He seems to have 
had a hard fight, inasmuch as, by the time he was 
thirty years of age, his total disposable funds 
amounted to twenty pounds. Nevertheless, middle life 
found him giving proof of his comprehension of the 
practical problems he had been roughly called upon to 
solve, by a career of remarkable prosperity. 

Finally, having reached old age with its well-earned 
surroundings of " honor, troops of friends," the hero 
of my story bethought himself of those who were mak- 
ing a like start m life, and how he could stretch out 
a helping hand to them. 

After long and anxious" reflection this successful 
practical man of business could devise nothing better 
than to provide them with the means of obtaining 
" sound, extensive, and practical scientific knowledge." 
And he devoted a large part of his wealth and five 
years of incessant work to this end. 

I need not point the moral of a tale which, as the 



SCIENCE AND CULTURE 201 

solid and spacious fabric of the Scientific College 
assures us, is no fable, nor can anything which I could 
say intensify the force of this practical answer to 
practical objections. 

We may take it for granted then, that, in the opinion 
of those best qualified to judge, the diffusion of thor- 
ough scientific education is an absolutely essential con- 
dition of industrial progress ; and that the College which 
has been opened to-day will confer an inestimable boon 
upon those whose livelihood is to be gained by the 
practice of the arts and manufactures of the district. 

The only question worth discussion is, whether the 
conditions, under which the work of the College is to 
be carried out, are such as to give it the best possible 
chance of achieving permanent success. 

Sir Josiah Mason, without doubt most wisely, has 
left very large freedom of action to the trustees, to 
whom he proposes ultimately to commit the adminis- 
tration of the College, so that they may be able to 
adjust its arrangements in accordance with the chang- 
ing conditions of the future. But, with respect to 
three points, he has laid most explicit injunctions upon 
both administrators and teachers. 

Party politics are forbidden to enter into the minds 
of either, so far as the work of the College is con- 
cerned; theology is as sternly banished from its pre- 
cincts ; and finally, it is especially declared that the 
College shall make no provision for " mere literary 
instruction and education." 

It does not concern me at present to dwell upon the 
first two injunctions any longer than may be needful 
to express my full conviction of their wisdom. But 



202 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

the third prohibition brings us face to face with those 
other opponents of scientific education, who are by no 
means in the moribund condition of the practical man, 
but alive, alert, and formidable. 

It is not impossible that we shall hear this express 
exclusion of " literary instruction and education " from 
a College which, nevertheless, professes to give a high 
and efficient education, sharply criticised. Certainly 
the time was that the Levites of culture would have 
sounded their trumpets against its walls as against an 
educational Jericho. 

How often have we not been told that the study of 
physical science is incompetent to confer culture ; that 
it touches none of the higher problems of life ; and, 
what is worse, that the continual devotion to scientific 
studies tends to generate a narrow and bigoted belief 
in the applicability of scientific methods to the search 
after truth of all kinds ? How frequently one has rea- 
son to observe that no reply to a troublesome argument 
tells so well as calling its author a " mere scientific 
specialist." And, as I am afraid it is not permissible 
to speak of this form of opposition to scientific educa- 
tion in the past tense ; may we not expect to be told 
that this, not only omission, but prohibition, of " mere 
literary instruction and education " is a patent example 
of scientific narrow-mindedness? 

I am not acquainted with Sir Josiah Mason's reasons 
for the action which he has taken ; but if, as I appre- 
hend is the case, he refers to the ordinary classical 
course of our schools and universities by the name 
of " mere literary instruction and education," I ven- 
ture to offer sundry reasons of my own in support of 
that action. 



SCIENCE AND CULTURE 203 

For I hold very strongly by two convictions — The 
first is, that neither the discipline nor the subject-matter 
of classical education is of such direct value to the 
student of physical science as to justify the expendi- 
ture of valuable time upon either; and the second is, 
that for the purpose of attaining real culture, an exclu- 
sively scientific education is at least as effectual as an 
exclusively literary education. 

I need hardly point out to you that these opinions, 
especially the latter, are diametrically opposed to those 
of the great majority of educated Englishmen, influ- 
enced as they are by school and university traditions. 
In their belief, culture is obtainable only by a liberal 
education; and a liberal education is synonymous, not 
merely with education and instruction in literature, but 
in one particular form of literature, namely, that of 
Greek and Roman antiquity. They hold that the man 
who has learned Latin and Greek, however little, is 
educated ; while he who is versed in other branches of 
knowledge, however deeply, is a more or less respect- 
able specialist, not admissible into the cultured caste. 
The stamp of the educated man, the University degree, 
is not for him. 

I am too well acquainted with the generous catholic- 
ity of spirit, the true sympathy with scientific thought, 
which pervades the writings of our chief apostle of 
culture to identify him with these opinions ; and yet one 
may cull from one and another of those epistles to the 
Philistines, which so much delight all who do not 
answci" to that name, sentences which lend them some 
support. 

Mr. Arnold tells us that the meaning of culture is 
" to know the best that has been thought and said in 



204 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

the world." It is the criticism of life contained in 
literature. That criticism regards " Europe as being, 
for intellectual and spiritual purposes, one great con- 
federation, bound to a joint action and working to a 
common result; and whose members have, for their 
common outfit, a knowledge of Greek, Roman, and 
Eastern antiquity, and of one another. Special, Igcal, 
and temporary advantages being put out of account, 
that modern nation will in the intellectual and spiritual 
sphere make most progress, which most thoroughly 
carries out this programme. And what is that but 
saying that we too, all of us, as individuals, the more 
thoroughly we carry it out, shall make the more 
progress? " ^ 

We have here to deal with two distinct propositions. 
The first, that a criticism of life is the essence of cul- 
ture ; the second, that literature contains the materials 
which suffice for the construction of such a criticism. 

I think that we must all assent to the first proposi- 
tion. For culture certainly means something quite 
different from learning or technical skill. It implies 
the possession of an ideal, and the habit of critically 
estimating the value of things by comparison with a 
theoretic standard. Perfect culture should supply a 
complete theory of life, based upon a clear knowledge 
alike of its possibilities and of its limitations. 

But we may agree to all this, and yet strongly dis- 
sent from the assumption that literature alone is com- 
petent to supply this knowledge. After having learnt 
all that Greek, Roman, and Eastern antiquity have 
thought and said, and all that modern literatures have 
to tell us, it is not self-evident that we have laid a 

1 Essays in Criticism, p. 37. 



SCIENCE AND CULTURE 205 

sufficiently broad and deep foundation for that criti- 
cism of life, which constitutes culture. 

Indeed, to any one acquainted with the scope of 
physical science, it is not at all evident. Considering 
progress only in the " intellectual and spiritual sphere," 
I find myself wholly unable to admit that either nations 
or individuals will really advance, if their common out- 
fit draws nothing from the stores of physical science. 
I should say that an army, without weapons of precision 
and with no particular base of operations, might more 
hopefully enter upon a campaign on the Rhine, than 
a man, devoid of a knowledge of what physical science 
has done in the last century, upon a criticism of life. 

When a biologist meets with an anomaly, he in- 
stinctively turns to the study of development to clear 
it up. The rationale of contradictory opinions may 
with equal confidence be sought in history. 

It is, happily, no new thing that Englishmen should 
employ their wealth in building and endowing institu- 
tions for educational purposes. But, five or six hun- 
dred years ago, deeds of foundation expressed or im- 
plied conditions as nearly as possible contrary to those 
which have been thought expedient by Sir Josiah 
Mason. That is to say, physical science was practi- 
cally ignored, while a certain literary training was en- 
joined as a means to the acquirement of knowledge 
which was essentially theological. 

The reason of this singular contradiction between the 
actions of men alike animated by a strong and dis- 
interested desire to promote the welfare of their fel- 
lows, is easily discovered. 

At that time, in fact, if any one desired knowledge 



2o6 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

beyond such as could be obtained by his own observa- 
tion, or by common conversation, his first necessity was 
to learn the Latin language, inasmuch as all the higher 
knowledge of the western world was contained in works 
written in that language. Hence, Latin grammar, with 
logic and rhetoric, studied through Latin, were the 
fundamentals of education. With respect to the sub- 
stance of the knowledge imparted through this channel, 
the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, as interpreted and 
supplemented by the Romish Church, were held to 
contain a complete and infallibly true body of 
information. 

Theological dicta were, to the thinkers of those days, 
that which the axioms and definitions of Euclid are to 
the geometers of these. The business of the philoso- 
phers of the middle ages was to deduce from the data 
furnished by the theologians, conclusions in accordance 
with ecclesiastical decrees. They were allowed the high 
privilege of showing, by logical process, how and why 
that which the Church said was true, must be true. 
And if their demonstrations fell short of or exceeded 
this limit, the Church was maternally ready to check 
their aberrations; if need were by the help of the 
secular arm. 

Between the two, our ancestors were furnished with 
a compact and complete criticism of life. They were 
told how the world began and how it would end ; they 
learned that all material existence was but a base and 
insignificant blot upon the fair face of the spiritual 
world, and that nature was, to all intents and purposes, 
the play-ground of the devil ; they learned that the earth 
is the center of the visible universe, and that man is 
the cynosure of things terrestrial ; and more especially 



SCIENCE AND CULTURE 207 

was it inculcated that the course of nature had no fixed 
order, but that it could be, and constantly was, altered 
by the agency of innumerable spiritual beings, good and 
bad, according as they were moved by the deeds and 
prayers of men. The sum and substance of the whole 
doctrine was to produce the conviction that the only 
thing really worth knowing in this world was how to 
secure that place in a better which, under certain con- 
ditions, the Church promised. 

Our ancestors had a living belief in this theory of 
life, and acted upon it in their dealings with education, 
as in all other matters. Culture meant saintliness — 
after the fashion of the saints of those days ; the edu- 
cation that led to it was, of necessity, theological ; and 
the way to theology lay through Latin. 

That the study of nature — further than was requi- 
site for the satisfaction of everyday wants — should 
have any bearing on human life was far from the 
thoughts of men thus trained. Indeed, as nature had 
been cursed for man's sake, it was an obvious conclu- 
sion that those who meddled with nature were likely 
to come into pretty close contact with Satan. And, if 
any born scientific investigator followed his instincts, 
he might safely reckon upon earning the reputation, 
and probably upon sufifering the fate, of a sorcerer. 

Had the western world been left to itself in Chinese 
isolation, there is no saying how long this state of 
things might have endured. But, happily, it was not 
left to itself. Even earlier than the thirteenth century, 
the development of Moorish civilization in Spain and 
the great movement of the Crusades had introduced the 
leaven which, from that day to this, has never ceased 
to work. At first, through the intermediation of Arabic 



2o8 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

translations, afterwards by the study of the originals, 
the western nations of Europe became acquainted with 
the writings of the ancient philosophers and poets, and, 
in time, with the whole of the vast literature of 
antiquity. 

Whatever there was of high intellectual aspiration 
or dominant capacity in Italy, France, Germany, and 
England, spent itself for centuries in taking possession 
of the rich inheritance left by the dead civilizations of 
Greece and Rome. Marvelously aided by the invention 
of printing, classical learning spread and flourished. 
Those who possessed it prided themselves on having 
attained the highest culture then within the reach of 
mankind. 

And justly. For, saving Dante on his solitary pin- 
nacle, there was no figure in modern literature at the 
time of the Renascence to compare with the men of 
antiquity; there was no art to compete with their 
sculpture ; there was no physical science but that which 
Greece had created. Above all, there was no other 
example of perfect intellectual freedom — of the un- 
hesitating acceptance of reason as the sole guide to 
truth and the supreme arbiter of conduct. 

The new learning necessarily soon exerted a pro- 
found influence upon education. The language of the 
monks and schoolmen seemed little better than gibber- 
ish to scholars fresh from Virgil and Cicero, and the 
study of Latin was placed upon a new foundation. 
Moreover, Latin itself ceased to afford the sole key to 
knowledge. The student who sought the highest 
thought of antiquity, found only a second-hand re- 
flection of it in Roman literature, and turned his face 
to the full light of the Greeks. And after a battle, not 



SCIENCE AND CULTURE 209 

altogether dissimilar to that which is at present being 
fought over the teaching of physical science, the study 
of Greek was recognized as an essential element of all 
higher education. 

Thus the Humanists, as they were called, won the 
day ; and the great reform which they effected was of 
incalculable service to mankind. But the Nemesis of 
all reformers is finality; and the reformers of educa- 
tion, like those of religion, fell into the profound, how- 
ever common, error of mistaking the beginning for the 
end of the work of reformation. 

The representatives of the Humanists, in the nine- 
teenth century, take their stand upon classical educa- 
tion as the sole avenue to culture, as firmly as if we 
were still in the age of Renascence. Yet, surely, the 
present intellectual relations of the modern and the 
ancient worlds are profoundly different from those 
which obtained three centuries ago. Leaving aside the 
existence of a great and characteristically modern lit- 
erature, of modern painting, and, especially, of modern 
music, there is one feature of the present state of the 
civilized world which separates it more widely from 
the Renascence, than the Renascence was separated 
from the middle ages. 

This distinctive character of our own times lies in 
the vast and constantly increasing part which is played 
by natural knowledge. Not only is our daily life 
shaped by it, not only does the prosperity of millions 
of men depend upon it, but our whole theory of life 
has long been influenced, consciously or unconsciously, 
by the general conceptions of the universe, which have 
been forced upon us by physical science. 

In fact, the most elementary acquaintance with the 



2IO THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

results of scientific investigation shows us that they 
offer a broad and striking contradiction to the opinion 
so impHcitly credited and taught in the middle ages. 

The notions of the beginning and the end of the 
world entertained by our forefathers are no longer 
credible. It is very certain that the earth is not the 
chief body in the material universe, and that the world 
is not subordinated to man's use. It is even more 
certain that nature is the expression of a definite order 
with which nothing interferes, and that the chief busi- 
ness of mankind is to learn that order and govern 
themselves accordingly. Moreover this scientific " crit- 
icism of life" presents itself to us with different cre- 
dentials from any other. It appeals not to authority, 
nor to what anybody may have thought or said, but to 
nature. It admits that all our interpretations of nat- 
ural fact are more or less imperfect and symbolic, and 
bids the learner seek for truth not among words but 
among things. It warns us that the assertion which 
outstrips evidence is not only a blunder but a crime. 

The purely classical education advocated by the rep- 
resentatives of the Humanists in our day, gives no 
inkling of all this. A man may be a better scholar than 
Erasmus, and know no more of the chief causes of the 
present intellectual fermentation than Erasmus did. 
Scholarly and pious persons, worthy of all respect, 
favor us with allocutions upon the sadness of the an- 
tagonism of science to their mediaeval way of thinking, 
which betray an ignorance of the first principles of 
scientific investigation, an incapacity for understanding 
what a man of science means by veracity, and an un- 
consciousness of the weight of established scientific 
truths, which is almost comical. 



SCIENCE AND CULTURE 211 

There is no great force in the tu qiioque argument, 
or else the advocates of scientific education might 
fairly enough retort upon the modern Humanists that 
they may be learned specialists, but that they possess 
no such sound foundation for a criticism of life as 
deserves the name of culture. And, indeed, if we were 
disposed to be cruel, we might urge that the Humanists 
have brought this reproach upon themselves, not be- 
cause they are too full of the spirit of the ancient 
Greek, but because they lack it. 

The period of the Renascence is commonly called that 
of the " Revival of Letters," as if the influences then 
brought to bear upon the mind of Western Europe had 
been wholly exhausted in the field of literature. I 
think it is very commonly forgotten that the revival of 
science, effected by the same agency, although less 
conspicuous, was not less momentous. 

In fact, the few and scattered students of nature of 
that day picked up the clew to her secrets exactly as 
it fell from the hands of the Greeks a thousand years 
before. The foundations of mathematics were so well 
laid by them, that our children learn their geometry 
from a book written for the schools of Alexandria two 
thousand years ago. Modern astronomy is the natural 
continuation and development of the work of Hippar- 
chus and of Ptolemy ; modern physics of that of Dem- 
ocritus and of Archimedes ; it was long before modern 
biological science outgrew the knowledge bequeathed 
to us by Aristotle, by Theophrastus, and by Galen. 

We cannot know all the best thoughts and sayings 
of the Greeks unless we know what they thought about 
natural phenomena. We cannot fully apprehend their 
criticism of life unless we understand the extent to 



212 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

which that criticism was affected by scientific concep- 
tions. We falsely pretend to be the inheritors of their 
culture, unless we are penetrated, as the best minds 
among them were, with an unhesitating faith that the 
free employment of reason, in accordance with scien- 
tific method, is the sole method of reaching truth. 

Thus I venture to think that the pretensions of our 
modern Humanists to the possession of the monopoly 
of culture and to the exclusive inheritance of the spirit 
of antiquity must be abated, if not abandoned. But I 
should be very sorry that anything I have said should 
be taken to imply a desire on my part to depreciate the 
value of classical education, as it might be and as it 
sometimes is. The native capacities of mankind vary 
no less than their opportunities ; and while culture is 
one, the road by which one man may best reach it is 
widely different from that which is most advantageous 
to another. Again, while scientific education is yet 
inchoate and tentative, classical education is thoroughly 
well organized upon the practical experience of gen- 
erations of teachers. So that, given ample time for 
learning and destination for ordinary life, or for a 
literary career, I do not think that a young Englishman 
in search of culture can do better than follow the 
course usually marked out for him, supplementing its 
deficiencies by his own eft'orts. 

But for those who mean to make science their serious 
occupation ; or who intend to follow the profession of 
medicine ; or who have to enter early upon the business 
of life; for all these, in my opinion, classical education 
is a mistake ; and it is for this reason that I am glad to 
see " mere literary education and instruction " shut out 
from the curriculum of Sir Josiah Mason's College, 



SCIENCE AND CULTURE 213 

seeing that its inclusion would probably lead to the 
introduction of the ordinary smattering of Latin and 
Greek. 

Nevertheless, I am the last person to question the im- 
portance of genuine literary education, or to suppose 
that intellectual culture can be complete without it. 
An exclusively scientific training will bring about a 
mental twist as surely as an exclusively literary train- 
ing. The value of the cargo does not compensate for 
a ship's being out of trim ; and I should be very sorry 
to think that the Scientific College would turn out none 
but lop-sided men. 

There is no need, however, that such a catastrophe 
should happen. Instruction in English, French, and 
German is provided, and thus the three greatest litera- 
tures of the modern world are made accessible to the 
student. 

French and German, and especially the latter lan- 
guage, are absolutely indispensable to those who desire 
full knowledge in any department of science. But even 
supposing that the knowledge of these languages ac- 
quired is not more than sufficient for purely scientific 
purposes, every Englishman has, in his native tongue, 
an almost perfect instrument of literary expression ; 
and, in his own literature, models of every kind of 
literary excellence. If an Englishman cannot get 
literary culture out of his Bil)le, his Shakespeare, his 
Milton, neither, in my belief, will the profoundest 
study of Homer and Sophocles, Virgil and Horace, 
give it to him. 

Thus, since the constitution of the College makes 
sufficient provision for literary as well as for scientific 
education, and since artistic instruction is also con- 



214 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

templated, it seems to me that a fairly complete culture 
is offered to all who are willing to take advantage of it. 

But I am not sure that at this point the " practical " 
man, scotched but not slain, may not ask what all this 
talk about culture has to do with an Institution, the 
object of which is defined to be " to promote the pros- 
perity of the manufactures and the industry of the 
country." He may suggest that what is wanted for 
this end is not culture, nor even a purely scientific dis- 
cipline, but simply a knowledge of applied science. 

I often wish that this phrase, " applied science," had 
never been invented. For it suggests that there is a 
sort of scientific knowledge of direct practical use, 
which can be studied apart from another sort of scien- 
tific knowledge, which is of no practical utility, and 
which is termed " pure science." But there is no more 
complete fallacy than this. What people call applied 
science is nothing but the application of pure science to 
particular classes of problems. It consists of deduc- 
tions from those general principles, established by rea- 
soning and observation, which constitute pure science. 
No one can safely make these deductions until he has 
a firm grasp of the principles ; and he can obtain that 
grasp only by personal experience of the operations 
of observation and of reasoning on which they are 
founded. 

Almost all the processes employed in the arts and 
manufactures fall within the range either of physics 
or of chemistry. In order to improve them, one must 
thoroughly understand them ; and no one has a chance 
of really understanding them, unless he has obtained 
that mastery of principles and that habit of dealing 
with facts, which is given by long-continued and well- 



SCIENCE AND CULTURE 215 

directed purely scientific training in the physical and 
the chemical laboratory. So that there really is no 
question as to the necessity of purely scientific disci- 
pline, even if the work of the College were limited by 
the narrowest interpretation of its stated aims. 

And, as to the desirableness of a wider culture than 
that yielded by science alone, it is to be recollected that 
the improvement of manufacturing processes is only 
one of the conditions which contribute to the prosperity 
of industry. Industry is a means and not an end ; and 
mankind work only to get something which they want. 
What that something is depends partly on their in- 
nate, and partly on their acquired, desires. 

If the wealth resulting from prosperous industry is 
to be spent upon the gratification of unworthy desires, 
if the increasing perfection of manufacturing processes 
is to be accompanied by an increasing debasement of 
those who carry them on, I do not see the good of 
industry and prosperity. 

Now it is perfectly true that men's views of what 
is desirable depend upon their characters ; and that the 
innate proclivities to which we give that name are not 
touched by any amount of instruction. But it does 
not follow that even mere intellectual education may 
not, to an indefinite extent, modify the practical mani- 
festation of the characters of men in their actions, 
by supplying them with motives unknown to the igno- 
rant. A pleasure-loving character will have pleasure 
of some sort; but, if you give him the choice, he may 
prefer pleasures which do not degrade him to those 
which do. And this choice is ofifered to every man, 
who possesses in literary or artistic culture a never- 
faihng source of pleasures, which are neither withered 



2i6 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 

by age, nor staled by custom, nor embittered in the 
recollection by the pangs of self-reproach. 

If the Institution opened to-day fulfils the intention 
of its founder, the picked intelligences among all classes 
of the population of this district will pass through it. 
No child born in Birmingham, henceforward, if he 
have the capacity to profit by the opportunities offered 
to him, first in the primary and other schools, and 
afterwards in the Scientific College, need fail to ob- 
tain, not merely the instruction, but the culture most 
appropriate to the conditions of his life. 

Within these walls, the future employer and the 
future artisan may sojourn together for a while, and 
carry, through all their lives, the stamp of the influ- 
ences then brought to bear upon them. Hence, it is 
not beside the mark to remind you, that the prosperity 
of industry depends not merely upon the improvement 
of manufacturing processes, not merely upon the en- 
nobling of the individual character, but upon a third 
condition, namely, a clear understanding of the con- 
ditions of social life, on the part of both the capitalist 
and the operative, and their agreement upon common 
principles of social action. They must learn that social 
phenomena are as much the expression of natural laws 
as any others ; that no social arrangements can be per- 
manent unless they harmonise with the requirements of 
social statics and dynamics ; and that, in the nature of 
things, there is an arbiter whose decisions execute 
themselves. 

But this knowledge is only to be obtained by the 
application of the methods of investigation adopted in 
physical researches to the investigation of the phe- 
nomena of society. Hence, I confess, I should like 



SCIENCE AND CULTURE 217 

to see one addition made to the excellent scheme of 
education propounded for the College, in the shape of 
provision for the teaching of Sociology. For though 
we are all agreed that party politics are to have no 
place in the instruction of the College ; yet in this coun- 
try, practically governed as it is now by universal suf- 
frage, every man who does his duty must exercise 
political functions. And, if the evils which are insep- 
arable from the good of political liberty are to be 
checked, if the perpetual oscillation of nations between 
anarchy and despotism is to be replaced by the steady 
march of self-restraining freedom ; it will be because 
men will gradually bring themselves to deal with po- 
litical, as they now deal with scientific questions ; to 
be as ashamed of undue haste and partisan prejudice 
in the one case as in the other ; and to believe that the 
machinery of society is at least as delicate as that of 
a spinning jenny, and as little likely to be improved 
by the meddling of those who have not taken the trou- 
ble to master the principles of its action. 



XVII 

Literature and Science 

By Matthew Arnold ^ 

Practical people talk with a smile of Plato and of 
his absolute ideas ; and it is impossible to deny that 
Plato's ideas do often seem unpractical and imprac- 
ticable, and especially when one views them in connec- 
tion with the life of a great work-a-day world like the 
United States. The necessary staple of the life of 
such a world Plato regards with disdain ; handicraft 
and trade and the working professions he regards with 
disdain ; but what becomes of the life of an industrial 
modern community if you take handicraft and trade 
and the working professions out of it? The base me- 
chanic arts and handicrafts, says Plato, bring about a 
natural weakness in the principle of excellence in a 
man, so that he cannot govern the ignoble growths in 
him, but nurses them, and cannot understand fostering 
any other. Those who exercise such arts and trades, 

1 " Literature and Science" was one of the addresses which Arnold de- 
livered on a lecture tour in the United States in 1883-4; it was printed 
in 1885 in the volume Discourses in America. It is an answer to Hux- 
ley's " Science and Culture," which precedes it in this collection. 

Matthew Arnold, 1822-1888, was equally well known as poet and as 
critic. He published volumes of poems in 1852, 1853, and 1855; he was 
Professor of Poetry at Oxford 1857-1867, and published during this 
period three volumes of critical essays; in 1869 in Culture and 
Anarchy he gave the fullest exposition of his gospel of culture, as ap- 
plied to the manifold political and industrial problems of his day. Be- 
ginning with Literature and Dogma in 1873, Arnold published several 
volumes of higher criticism. — Editor. 

218 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 219 

as they have their bodies, he says, marred by their 
vulgar businesses, so they have their souls, too, bowed 
and broken by them. And if one of these uncomely 
people has a mind to seek self-culture and philosophy, 
Plato compares him to a bald little tinker, who has 
scraped together money, and has got his release from 
service, and has had a bath, and bought a new coat, 
and is rigged out like a bridegroom about to marry the 
daughter of his master who has fallen into poor and 
helpless estate. 

Nor do the working professions fare any better than 
trade at the hands of Plato. He draws for us an 
inimitable picture of the working lawyer, and of his life 
of bondage ; he shows how this bondage from his youth 
up has stunted and warped him, and made him small 
and crooked of soul, encompassing him with difficulties 
which he is not man enough to rely on justice and 
truth as means to encounter, but has recourse, for help 
out of them, to falsehood and wrong. And so, says 
Plato, this poor creature is bent and broken, and grows 
up from boy to man without a particle of soundness 
in him, although exceedingly smart and clever in his 
own esteem. 

One cannot refuse to admire the artist who draws 
these pictures. But we say to ourselves that his ideas 
show the influence of a primitive and obsolete order of 
things, w^hen the warrior caste and the priestly caste 
were alone in honor, and the humble work of the world 
was done by slaves. We have now changed all that; 
the modern majority ^ consists in work, as Emerson de- 

1 Emerson's sentence is: " Feudalism and Orientalism had long 
enough thought it majestic to do nothing; the modern majesty consists 
in work." — "Literary Ethics," Centenary Edition, I, 179. — Editor. 



220 MATTHEW ARNOLD 

clares; and in work, we may add, principally of such 
plain and dusty kind as the work of cultivators of the 
ground, handicraftsmen, men of trade and business, 
men of the working professions. Above all is this true 
in a great industrious community such as that of the 
United States. 

Now education, many people go on to say, is still 
mainly governed by the ideas of men like Plato, who 
lived when the warrior caste and the priestly or philo- 
sophical class were alone in honor, and the really 
useful part of the community were slaves. It is an 
education fitted for persons of leisure in such a com- 
munity. This education passed from Greece and 
Rome to the feudal communities of Europe, where also 
the warrior caste and the priestly caste were alone 
held in honor, and where the really useful and working 
part of the community, though not nominally slaves 
as in the pagan world, were practically not much better 
off than slaves, and not more seriously regarded. And 
how absurd it is, people end by saying, to inflict this 
education upon an industrious modern community, 
where very few indeed are persons of leisure, and the 
mass to be considered has not leisure, but is bound, for 
its own great good, and for the great good of the world 
at large, to plain labor and to industrial pursuits, and 
the education in question tends necessarily to make 
men dissatisfied with these pursuits and unfitted for 
them! 

That is what is said. So far I must defend Plato, 
as to plead that his view of education and studies is 
in the general, as it seems to me, sound enough, and 
fitted for all sorts and conditions of men, whatever 
their pursuits may be. " An intelligent man," says 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 221 

Plato, " will prize those studies which result in his soul 
getting soberness, righteousness, and wisdom, and will 
less value the others." I cannot consider that a bad 
description of the aim of education, and of the motives 
which should govern us in the choice of studies, 
whether we are preparing ourselves for a hereditary 
seat in the English House of Lords or for the pork 
trade in Chicago. 

Still I admit that Plato's world was not ours, that 
his scorn of trade and handicraft is fantastic, that 
he had no conception of a great industrial community 
such as that of the United States, and that such a 
community must and will shape its education to suit 
its own needs. If the usual education handed down 
to it from the past does not suit it, it will certainly 
before long drop this and try another. The usual 
education in the past has been mainly literary. The 
question is whether the studies which were long sup- 
posed to be the best for all of us are practically the 
best now ; whether others are not better. The tyranny 
of the past, many think, weighs on us injuriously in 
the predominance given to letters in education. The 
question is raised whether, to meet the needs of our 
modern life, the predominance ought not now to pass 
from letters to science ; and naturally the question is 
nowhere raised with more energy than here in the 
United States. The design of abasing what is called 
" mere literary instruction and education," and of 
exalting what is called " sound, extensive, and prac- 
tical scientific knowledge," is, in this intensely modern 
world of the United States, even more perhaps than 
in Europe, a very popular design, and makes great and 
rapid progress. 



222 MATTHEW ARNOLD 

I am going to ask whether the present movement for 
ousting letters from their old predominance in educa- 
tion, and for transferring the predominance in edu- 
cation to the natural sciences, whether this brisk and 
flourishing movement ought to prevail, and whether it 
is likely that in the end it really will prevail. An ob- 
jection may be raised which I will anticipate. My own 
studies have been almost wholly in letters, and my visits 
to the field of the natural sciences have been very 
slight and inadequate, although those sciences have 
always strongly moved my curiosity. A man of 
letters, it will perhaps be said, is not competent to 
discuss the comparative merits of letters and natural 
science as means of education. To this objection I 
reply, first of all, that his incompetence, if he attempts 
the discussion but is really incompetent for it, will be 
abundantly visible ; nobody will be taken in ; he will 
have plenty of sharp observers and critics to save man- 
kind from that danger. But the hne I am going to 
follow is, as you will soon discover, so extremely 
simple, that perhaps it may be followed without failure 
even by one who for a more ambitious line of discus- 
sion would be quite incompetent. 

Some of you may possibly remember a phrase of 
mine which has been the object of a good deal of com- 
ment; an observation to the efifect that in our culture, 
the aim being to know ourselves mid the ivorld, we 
have, as the means to this end, to knozv the best which 
has been thought and said in the -world. A man of 
science, who is also an excellent writer and the very 
prince of debaters. Professor Huxley, in a discourse 
at the opening of Sir Josiah Mason's college at Birm- 
ingham, laying hold of this phrase, expanded it by 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 223 

quoting some more words of mine, which are these: 
" The civilized world is to be regarded as now being, 
for intellectual and spiritual purposes, one great con- 
federation, bound to a joint action and working to a 
common result; and whose members have for their 
proper outfit a knowledge of Greek, Roman, and East- 
ern antiquity, and of one another. Special local and 
temporary advantages being put out of account, that 
modern nation will in the intellectual and spiritual 
sphere make most progress, which most thoroughly 
carries out this programme." 

Now on my phrase, thus enlarged. Professor Huxley 
remarks that when I speak of the above-mentioned 
knowledge as enabling us to know ourselves and the 
world, I assert literature to contain the materials which 
suffice for thus making us know ourselves and the 
world. But it is not by any means clear, says he, that 
after having learnt all which ancient and modern liter- 
atures have to tell us, we have laid a sufficiently broad 
and deep foundation for that criticism of life, that 
knowledge of ourselves and the world, which consti- 
tutes culture. On the contrary, Professor Huxley 
declares that he finds himself " wholly unable to admit 
that either nations or individuals will really advance, if 
their outfit draws nothing from the stores of physical 
science. An army without weapons of precision, and 
with no particular base of operations, might more 
hopefully enter upon a campaign on the Rhine, than a 
man, devoid of a knowledge of what physical science 
has done in the last century, upon a criticism of 
life." 

This shows how needful it is for those who are to 
discuss any matter together, to have a common under- 



224 MATTHEW ARNOLD 

standing as to the sense of the terms they employ, — 
how needful, and how difificult. What Professor Hux- 
ley says, implies just the reproach which is so often 
brought against the study of belles-lettres, as they are 
called : that the study is an elegant one, but slight and 
ineffectual ; a smattering of Greek and Latin and other 
ornamental things, of little use for anyone whose 
object is to get at truth, and to be a practical man. 
So, too, M. Renan talks of the " superficial human- 
ism " of a school-course which treats us as if we were 
all going to be poets, writers, preachers, orators, and 
he opposes this humanism to positive science, or the 
critical search after truth. And there is always a 
tendency in those who are remonstrating against the 
predominance of letters in education, to understand by 
letters belles-lettres, and by belles-lettres a superficial 
humanism, the opposite of science or true knowledge. 

But when we talk of knowing Greek and Roman 
antiquity, for instance, which is the knowledge people 
have called the humanities, I for my part mean a 
knowledge which is something more than a superficial 
humanism, mainly decorative. " I call all teaching 
scientific," says Wolf, the critic of Homer, " which is 
systematically laid out and followed up to its original 
sources. For example: a knowledge of classical an- 
tiquity is scientific when the remains of classical an- 
tiquity are correctly studied in the original languages." 
There can be no doubt that Wolf is perfectly right; 
that all learning is scientific which is systematically 
laid out and followed up to its original sources, and 
that a genuine humanism is scientific. 

When I speak of knowing Greek and Roman anti- 
quity, therefore, as a help to knowing ourselves and 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 225 

the world, I mean more than a knowledge of so much 
vocabulary, so much grammar, so many portions of 
authors in the Greek and Latin languages. I mean 
knowing the Greeks and Romans, and their life and 
genius, and what they were and did in the world ; what 
we get from them, and what is its value. That, at 
least, is the ideal; and when we talk of endeavoring 
to know Greek and Roman antiquity, as a help to 
knowing ourselves and the world, we mean endeavor- 
ing so to know them as to satisfy this ideal, however 
much we may still fall short of it. 

The same also as to knowing our own and other 
modern nations, with the like aim of getting to under- 
stand ourselves and the world. To know the best that 
has been thought and said by the modern nations, is to 
know, says Professor Huxley, " only what modern 
literatures have to tell us ; it is the criticism of life 
contained in modern literature." And yet " the dis- 
tinctive character of our times," he urges, " lies in the 
vast and constantly increasing part which is played by 
natural knowledge." And how, therefore, can a man, 
devoid of knowledge of what physical science has done 
in the last century, enter hopefully upon a criticism of 
modern life? 

Let us, I say, be agreed about the meaning of the 
terms we are using. I talk of knowing the best which 
has been thought and uttered in the world ; Professor 
Huxley says this means knowing literature. Litera- 
ture is a large word ; it may mean everything written 
with letters or printed in a book. Euclid's Elements 
and Newton's Principia are thus literature. All knowl- 
edge that reaches us through books is literature. But 
by literature Professor Huxley means belles-lettres. He 



226 MATTHEW ARNOLD 

means to make me say, that knowing the best which 
has been thought and said by the modern nations is 
knowing their belles-lettres and no more. And this is 
no sufficient equipment, he argues, for a criticism of 
modern Hfe. But as I do not mean, by knowing an- 
cient Rome, knowing merely more or less of Latin 
belles-lettres, and taking no account of Rome's military, 
and political, and legal, and administrative work in 
the world ; and as, by knowing ancient Greece, I under- 
stand knowing her as the giver of Greek art, and the 
guide to a free and right use of reason and to scientific 
method, and the founder of our mathematics and 
physics and astronomy and biology, — I understand 
knowing her as all this, and not merely knowing cer- 
tain Greek poems, and histories, and treatises, and 
speeches, — so as to the knowledge of modern nations 
also. By knowing modern nations, I mean not merely 
knowing their belles-lettres, but knowing also what 
has been done by such men as Copernicus, Galileo, 
Newton, Darwin. " Our ancestors learned," says 
Professor Huxley, " that the earth is the center of the 
visible universe, and that man is the cynosure of things 
terrestrial ; and more especially was it inculcated that 
the course of nature had no fixed order, but that it 
could be, and constantly was, altered." But for us 
now, continues Professor Huxley, " the notions of the 
beginning and the end of the world entertained by our 
forefathers are no longer credible. It is very certain 
that the earth is not the chief body in the material 
universe, and that the world is not subordinated to 
man's use. It is even more certain that nature is the 
expression of a definite order, with which nothing 
interferes." " And yet," he cries, " the purely clas- 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 227 

sical education advocated by the representatives of 
the humanists in our day gives no inkHng of all 
this ! " 

In due place and time I will just touch upon that 
vexed question of classical education ; but at present 
the question is as to what is meant by knowing the 
best which modern nations have thought and said. 
It is not knowing their belles-lettres merely which is 
meant. To know Italian belles-lettres is not to know 
Italy, and to know English belles-lettres is not to 
know England. Into knowing Italy and England there 
comes a great deal more, Galileo and Newton amongst 
it. The reproach of being a superficial humanism, a 
tincture of belles-lettres, may attach rightly enough to 
some other disciplines ; but to the particular discipline 
recommended when I proposed knowing the best that 
has been thought and said in the world, it does not 
apply. In that best I certainly include what in modern 
times has been thought and said by the great observers 
and knowers of nature. 

There is, therefore, really no question between Pro- 
fessor Huxley and me as to whether knowing the great 
results of the modern scientific study of nature is not 
required as a part of our culture, as well as knowing 
the products of literature and art. But to follow the 
processes by which those results are reached, ought, 
say the friends of physical science, to be made the 
staple of education for the bulk of mankind. And here 
there does arise a question between those whom Pro- 
fessor Huxley calls with playful sarcasm " the Levites 
of culture," and those whom the poor humanist is 
sometimes apt to regard as its Nebuchadnezzars. 

The great results of the scientific investigation of 



228 MATTHEW ARNOLD 

nature we are agreed upon knowing, but how much of 
our study are we bound to give to the processes by 
which those results are reached? The results have 
their visible bearing on human life. But all the pro- 
cesses, too, all the items of fact, by which those results 
are reached and established, are interesting. All 
knowledge is interesting to a wise man, and the knowl- 
edge of nature is interesting to all men. It is very 
interesting to know, that, from the albuminous white 
of the egg, the chick in the egg gets the materials for 
its flesh, bones, blood, and feathers ; while, from the 
fatty yolk of the egg, it gets the heat and energy which 
enable it at length to break its shell and begin the world. 
It is less interesting, perhaps, but still it is interesting, 
to know that when a taper burns, the wax is converted 
into carbonic acid and water. Moreover, it is quite 
true that the habit of dealing with facts, which is given 
by the study of nature, is, as the friends of physical 
science praise it for being, an excellent discipline. The 
appeal, in the study of nature, is constantly to observa- 
tion and experiment ; not only is it said that the thing 
is so, but we can be made to see that it is so. Not only 
does a man tell us that when a taper burns the wax is 
converted into carbonic acid and water, as a man may 
tell us, if he likes, that Charon is punting his ferry-boat 
on the river Styx, or that Victor Hugo is a sublime 
poet, or Mr. Gladstone the most admirable of states- 
men ; but we are made to see that the conversion into 
carbonic acid and water does actually happen. This 
reality of natural knowledge it is, which makes the 
friends of physical science contrast it, as a knowledge 
of things, with the humanist's knowledge, which is, 
say they, a knowledge of words. And hence Professor 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 229 

Huxley is moved to lay it down that, "for the purpose 
of attaining real culture, an exclusively scientific edu- 
cation is at least as effectual as an exclusively literary 
education," And a certain President of the Section 
for Mechanical Science in the British Association is, 
in Scripture phrase, " very bold," and declares that if 
a man, in his mental training, " has substituted litera- 
ture and history for natural science, he has chosen 
the less useful alternative." But whether we go these 
lengths or not, we must all admit that in natural science 
the habit gained of dealing with facts is a most valuable 
discipline, and that everyone should have some ex- 
perience of it. 

More than this, however, is demanded by the re- 
formers. It is proposed to make the training in nat- 
ural science the main part of education, for the great 
majority of mankind at any rate. And here, I con- 
fess, I part company with the friends of physical 
science, with whom up to this point I have been agree- 
ing. In differing from them, however, I wish to pro- 
ceed with the utmost caution and diffidence. The 
smallness of my own acquaintance with the disciplines 
of natural science is ever before my mind, and I am 
fearful of doing these disciplines an injustice. The 
ability and pugnacity of the partisans of natural science 
make them formidable persons to contradict. The 
tone of tentative inquiry, which befits a being of dim 
faculties and bounded knowledge, is the tone I would 
wish to take and not to depart from. At present it 
seems to me, that those who are for giving to natural 
knowledge, as they call it, the chief place in the edu- 
cation of the majority of mankind, leave one important 
thing out of their account: the constitution of human 



230 MATTHEW ARNOLD 

nature. But I put this forward on the strength of 
some facts not at all recondite, very far from it ; facts 
capable of being stated in the simplest possible fashion, 
and to which, if I so state them, the man of science 
will, I am sure, be willing to allow their due weight. 

Deny the facts altogether, I think, he hardly can. 
He can hardly deny, that when we set ourselves to 
enumerate the powers which go to the building up of 
human life, and say that they are the power of conduct, 
the power of intellect and knowledge, the power of 
beauty, and the power of social life and manners, — 
he can hardly deny that this scheme, though drawn in 
rough and plain lines enough, and not pretending to 
scientific exactness, does yet give a fairly true repre- 
sentation of the matter. Human nature is built up by 
these powers; we have the need for them all. When 
we have rightly met and adjusted the claims of them 
all, we shall then be in a fair way for getting soberness 
and righteousness, with wisdom. This is evident 
enough, and the friends of physical science would 
admit it. 

But perhaps they may not have sufficiently observed 
another thing: namely, that the several powers just 
mentioned are not isolated, but there is, in the gener- 
ality of mankind, a perpetual tendency to relate them 
one to another in divers ways. With one such way 
of relating them I am particularly concerned now. 
Following our instinct for intellect and knowledge, we 
acquire pieces of knowledge ; and presently, in the 
generality of men, there arises the desire to relate these 
pieces of knowledge to our sense for conduct, to our 
sense for beauty, — and there is weariness and dissat- 
isfaction if the desire is balked. Now in this desire 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 231 

lies, I think, the strength of that hold which letters 
have upon us. 

All knowledge is, as I said just now, interesting; 
and even items of knowledge which from the nature 
of the case cannot well be related, but must stand iso- 
lated in our thoughts, have their interest. Even lists 
of exceptions have their interest. If we are studying 
Greek accents, it is interesting to know that pais and 
pas, and some other monosyllables of the same form of 
declension, do not take the circumflex upon the last 
syllable of the genitive plural, but vary, in this respect, 
from the common rule. If we are studying physiology, 
it is interesting to know that the pulmonary artery 
carries dark blood and the pulmonary vein carries 
bright blood, departing in this respect from the com- 
mon rule for the division of labor between the veins 
and the arteries. But everyone knows how we seek nat- 
urally to combine the pieces of our knowledge together, 
to bring them under general rules, to relate them to 
principles ; and how unsatisfactory and tiresome it 
would be to go on forever learning lists of exceptions, or 
accumulating items of fact which must stand isolated. 

Well, that same need of relating our knowledge, 
which operates here within the sphere of our knowl- 
edge itself, we shall find operating, also, outside that 
sphere. We experience, as we go on learning and 
knowing, — the vast majority of us experience, — the 
need of relating what we have learnt and known to the 
sense which we have in us for conduct, to the sense 
which we have in us for beauty. 

A certain Greek prophetess of Mantineia in Arcadia, 
Diotima by name, once explained to the philosopher 
Socrates that love, and impulse, and bent of all kinds. 



232 MATTHEW ARNOLD 

is, in fact, nothing else but the desire in men that good 
should forever be present to them. This desire for 
good, Diotima assured Socrates, is our fundamental 
desire, of which fundamental desire every impulse in 
us is only some one particular form. And therefore 
this fundamental desire it is, I suppose, — this desire 
in men that good should be forever present to them, — 
v^^hich acts in us when we feel the impulse for relating 
our knowledge to our sense for conduct and to our 
sense for beauty. At any rate, with men in general 
the instinct exists. Such is human nature. And the 
instinct, it will be admitted, is innocent, and human 
nature is preserved by our following the lead of its 
innocent instincts. Therefore, in seeking to gratify 
this instinct in question, we are following the instinct 
of self-preservation in humanity. 

But, no doubt, some kinds of knowledge cannot be 
made to directly serve the instinct in question, cannot 
be directly related to the sense for beauty, to the sense 
for conduct. These are instrument-knowledges; they 
lead on to other knowledges, which can. A man who 
passes his life in instrument-knowledges is a specialist. 
They may be invaluable as instruments to something 
beyond, for those who have the gift thus to employ 
them ; and they may be disciplines in themselves where- 
in it is useful for everyone to have some schooling. 
But it is inconceivable that the generality of men 
should pass all their mental life with Greek accents or 
with formal logic. My friend Professor Sylvester, 
who is one of the first mathematicians in the world, 
holds transcendental doctrines as to the virtue of math- 
ematics, but those doctrines are not for common men. 
In the very Senate House and heart of our English 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 233 

Cambridge I once ventured, though not without an 
apology for my profaneness, to hazard the opinion 
that for the majority of mankind a Httle of mathe- 
matics, even, goes a long way. Of course this is quite 
consistent with their being of immense importance as 
an instrument to something else ; but it is the few who 
have the aptitude for thus using them, not the bulk 
of mankind. 

The natural sciences do not, however, stand on the 
same footing with these instrument-knowledges. Ex- 
perience shows us that the generality of men will find 
more interest in learning that, when a taper burns, the 
wax is converted into carbonic acid and water, or in 
learning the explanation of the phenomenon of dew, 
or in learning how the circulation of the blood is car- 
ried on, than they find in learning that the genitive 
plural of pais and pas does not take the circumflex on 
the termination. And one piece of natural knowledge 
is added to another, and others are added to that, and 
at last we come to propositions so interesting as Mr. 
Darwin's famous proposition that " our ancestor was 
a hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed 
ears, probably arboreal in his habits." Or we come 
to propositions of such reach and magnitude as those 
which Professor Huxley delivers, when he says that 
the notions of our forefathers about the beginning and 
the end of the world were all wrong, and that nature 
is the expression of a definite order with which noth- 
ing interferes. 

Interesting, indeed, these results of science are, im- 
portant they are, and we should all of us be acquainted 
with them. But what I now wish you to mark is, that 
we are still, when they are propounded to us and we 



234 MATTHEW ARNOLD 

receive them, we are still in the sphere of intellect 
and knowledge. And for the generality of men there 
will be found, I say, to arise, when they have duly taken 
in the proposition that their ancestor was " a hairy 
quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed ears, prob- 
ably arboreal in his habits," there will be found to 
arise an invincible desire to relate this proposition to 
the sense in us for conduct, and to the sense in us for 
beauty. But this the men of science will not do for 
us, and will hardly even profess to do. They will give 
us other pieces of knowledge, other facts, about other 
animals and their ancestors, or about plants, or about 
stones, or about stars ; and they may finally bring us 
to those great " general conceptions of the universe, 
which are forced upon us all," says Professor Huxley, 
" by the progress of physical science." But still it will 
be knowledge only which they give us ; knowledge not 
put for us into relation with our sense for conduct, our 
sense for beauty, and touched with emotion by being 
so put ; not thus put for us, and therefore, to the 
majority of mankind, after a certain while, unsatisfy- 
ing, wearying. 

Not to the born naturalist, I admit. But what do 
we mean by a born naturalist? We mean a man in 
whom the zeal for observing nature is so uncommonly 
strong and eminent, that it marks him ofif from the 
bulk of mankind. Such a man will pass his life hap- 
pily in collecting natural knowledge and reasoning 
upon it, and will ask for nothing, or hardly anything, 
more. I have heard it said that the sagacious and 
admirable naturalist whom we lost not very long ago, 
Mr. Darwin, once owned to a friend that for his part 
he did not experience the necessity for two things 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 235 

which most men find so necessary to them, — rehgion 
and poetry; science and the domestic affections, he 
thought, were enough. To a born naturahst, I can 
well understand that this should seem so. So absorb- 
ing is his occupation with nature, so strong his love for 
his occupation, that he goes on acquiring natural 
knowledge and reasoning upon it, and has little time or 
inclination for thinking about getting it related to 
the desire in man for conduct, the desire in man for 
beauty. He relates it to them for himself as he goes 
along, so far as he feels the need ; and he draws from 
the domestic affections all the additional solace neces- 
sary. But then Darwins are extremely rare. An- 
other great and admirable master of natural knowl- 
edge, Faraday, was a Sandemanian. That is to say, he 
related his knowledge to his instinct for conduct and 
to his instinct for beauty, by the aid of that respectable 
Scottish sectary, Robert Sandeman. And so strong, 
in general, is the demand of religion and poetry to 
have their share in a man, to associate themselves with 
his knowing, and to relieve and rejoice it, that, prob- 
ably, for one man amongst us with the disposition to 
do as Darwin did in this respect, there are at least fifty 
with the disposition to do as Faraday. 

Education lays hold upon us, in fact, by satisfying 
this demand. Professor Huxley holds up to scorn 
mediaeval education, with its neglect of the knowledge 
of nature, its poverty even of literary studies, its formal 
logic devoted to " showing how and why that which 
the Church said was true must be true." But the great 
mediaeval Universities were not brought into being, we 
may be sure, by the zeal for giving a jejune and con- 
temptible education. Kings have been their nursing 



236 MATTHEW ARNOLD 

fathers, and queens have been their nursing mothers, 
but not for this. The mediseval Universities came into 
being, because the supposed knowledge, dehvered by 
Scripture and the Church, so deeply engaged men's 
hearts, by so simply, easily, and powerfully relating 
itself to their desire for conduct, their desire for 
beauty. All other knowledge was dominated by this 
supposed knowledge and was subordinated to it, 
because of the surpassing strength of the hold which 
it gained upon the affections of men, by allying itself 
profoundly with their sense for conduct, their sense 
for beauty. 

But now, says Professor Huxley, conceptions of the 
universe fatal to the notions held by our forefathers 
have been forced upon us by physical science. Grant 
to him that they are thus fatal, that the new concep- 
tions must and will soon become current everywhere, 
and that every one will finally perceive them to be fatal 
to the beliefs of our forefathers. The need of humane 
letters, as they are truly called, because they serve the 
paramount desire in men that good should be for ever 
present to them, — the need of humane letters, to es- 
tablish a relation between the new conceptions, and 
our instinct for beauty, our instinct for conduct, is only 
the more visible. The Middle Age could do without 
humane letters, as it could do without the study of na- 
ture, because its supposed knowledge was made to 
engage its emotions so powerfully. Grant that the 
supposed knowledge disappears, its power of being 
made to engage the emotions will of course disappear 
along with it, — but the emotions themselves, and their 
claim to be engaged and satisfied, will remain. Now 
if we find by experience that humane letters have an 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 237 

undeniable power of engaging the emotions, the im- 
portance of humane letters in a man's training becomes 
not less, but greater, in proportion to the success of 
modern science in extirpating what it calls " mediaeval 
thinking." 

Have humane letters, then, have poetry and elo- 
quence, the power here attributed to them of engaging 
the emotions, and do they exercise it? And if they 
have it and exercise it, hozv do they exercise it, so as 
to exert an influence upon man's sense for conduct, his 
sense for beauty? Finally, even if they both can and 
do exert an influence upon the senses in question, how 
are they to relate to them the results, — the modern 
results, — of natural science? All these questions may 
be asked. First, have poetry and eloquence the power 
of calling out the emotions? The appeal is to ex- 
perience. Experience shows that for the vast majority 
of men, for mankind in general, they have the power. 
Next, do they exercise it? They do. But then, how 
do they exercise it so as to affect man's sense for con- 
duct, his sense for beauty ? And this is perhaps a case 
for applying the Preacher's words : " Though a man 
labor to seek it out, yet he shall not find it ; yea, farther, 
though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he not be 
able to find it." ^ Why should it be one thing, in its 
effect upon the emotions, to say, " Patience is a virtue," 
and quite another thing, in its effect upon the emotions, 
to say with Homer, 

tXtjtoz' yap Molpai dv/xbv deaav avOpwiroiffiv — 2 

"for an enduring heart have the destinies appointed 

1 Ecclesiastes, viii, 17. 
2 Iliad, xxiv, 49. 



238 MATTHEW ARNOLD 

to the children of men " ? Why should it be one 
thing, in its effect upon the emotions, to say with the 
philosopher Spinoza, Felicitas in ea consistit quod 
homo suitm esse conserz/are potest — " Man's happi- 
ness consists in his being able to preserve his own 
essence," and quite another thing, in its effect upon the 
emotions, to say with the Gospel, " What is a man 
advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose him- 
self, forfeit himself?" How does this difference of 
eiifect arise? I cannot tell, and I am not much con- 
cerned to know ; the important thing is that it does 
arise, and that we can profit by it. But how, finally, 
are poetry and eloquence to exercise the power of re- 
lating the modern results of natural science to man's 
instinct for conduct, his instinct for beauty ? And here 
again I answer that I do not know how they will exer- 
cise it, but that they can and will exercise it I am sure. 
I do not mean that modern philosophical poets and 
modern philosophical moralists are to come and relate 
for us, in express terms, the results of modern scientific 
research to our instinct for conduct, our instinct for 
beauty. But I mean that we shall find, as a matter of 
experience, if we know the best that has been thought 
and uttered in the world, we shall find that the art and 
poetry and eloquence of men who lived, perhaps, long 
ago, who had the most limited natural knowledge, who 
had the most erroneous conceptions about many im- 
portant matters, we shall find that this art, and poetry, 
and eloquence, have in fact not only the power of re- 
freshing and delighting us, they have also the power, — 
such is the strength and worth, in essentials, of their 
authors' criticism of life, — they have a fortifying, and 
elevating, and quickening, and suggestive power, cap- 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 239 

able of wonderfully helping us to relate the results of 
modern science to our need for conduct, our need for 
beauty. Homer's conceptions of the physical universe 
were, I imagine, grotesque ; but really, under the shock 
of hearing from modern science that " the world is 
not subordinated to man's use, and that man is not the 
cynosure of things terrestrial," I could, for my own 
part, desire no better comfort than Homer's line which 
I quoted just now. 

rXriTOv yap Moipai dvfihv Beaav dvOpuifOKHv — 

" for an enduring heart have the destinies appointed to 
the children of men " ! 

And the more that men's minds are cleared, the more 
that the results of science are frankly accepted, the 
more that poetry and eloquence come to be received 
and studied as what in truth they really are, — the criti- 
cism of life by gifted men, alive and active with ex- 
tarordinary power at an unusual number of points ; — 
so much the more will the value of humane letters, and 
of art also, which is an utterance having a like kind 
of power with theirs, be felt and acknowledged, and 
their place in education be secured. 

And therefore, to say the truth, I cannot really think 
that humane letters are in much actual danger of being 
thrust out from their leading place in education, in 
spite of the array of authorities against them at this 
moment. So long as human nature is what it is, 
their attractions will remain irresistible. As with 
Greek, so with letters generally: they will some day 
come, we may hope, to be studied more rationally, but 
they will not lose their place. What will happen will 



240 MATTHEW ARNOLD 

rather be that there will be crowded into education 
other matters besides, far too many; there will be, 
perhaps, a period of unsettlement and confusion and 
false tendency; but letters will not in the end lose 
their leading place. If they lose it for a time, they 
will get it back again. We shall be brought back to 
them by our wants and aspirations. And a poor 
humanist may possess his soul in patience, neither 
strive nor cry, admit the energy and brilliancy of the 
partisans of physical science, and their present favor 
with the public, to be far greater than his own, and 
still have a happy faith that the nature of things works 
silently on behalf of the studies which he loves, and 
that, while we shall all have to acquaint ourselves with 
the great results reached by modern science, and to 
give ourselves as much training in its disciplines as we 
can conveniently carry, yet the majority of men will 
always require humane letters ; and so much the more, 
as they have the more and the greater results of science 
to relate to the need in man for conduct, and to the 
need in him for beauty. 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 241 

NOTE TO ESSAY XVII 

The following paragraphs, from Arnold's Introduc- 
tion to Ward's English Poets, make an interesting illus- 
tration and reinforcement of his idea of the relation 
of literature to science : 

" ' The future of poetry is immense, because in 
poetry, where it is worthy of its high destinies, our 
race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer 
stay. There is not a creed which is not shaken, not 
an accredited dogma which is not shown to be ques- 
tionable, not a received tradition which does not 
threaten to dissolve. Our religion has materialized 
itself in the fact, in the supposed fact; it has attached 
its emotion to the fact, and now the fact is failing it. 
But for poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a 
world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches 
its emotion to the idea ; the idea is the fact. The 
strongest part of our religion to-day is its unconscious 
poetry.' 

" Let me be permitted to quote these words of my 
own, as uttering the thought which should, in my 
opinion, go with us and govern us in all our study of 
poetry. In the present work it is the course of one 
great contributory stream to the world-river of poetry 
that we are invited to follow. We are here invited 
to trace the stream of English poetry. But whether 
we set ourselves, as here, to follow only one of the 
several streams that make the mighty river of poetry, 
or whether we seek to know them all, our governing 
thought should be the same. We should conceive of 
poetry worthily, and more highly than it has been the 
custom to conceive of it. We should conceive of it 



242 MATTHEW ARNOLD 

as capable of higher uses, and called to higher destinies, 
than those which in general men have assigned to it 
hitherto. More and more mankind will discover that 
we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to 
console us, to sustain us. Without poetry, our science 
will appear incomplete ; and most of what now passes 
with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by 
poetry. Science, I say, will appear incomplete with- 
out it. For finely and truly does Wordsworth call 
poetry ' the impassioned expression which is in the 
countenance of all science ' ; and what is a countenance 
without its expression? Again, Wordsworth finely 
and truly calls poetry ' the breath and finer spirit of 
all knowledge ' : our religion, parading evidences such 
as those on which the popular mind relies now ; our 
philosophy, pluming itself on its reasonings about cau- 
sation and finite and infinite being; what are they but 
the shadows and dreams and false shows of knowl- 
edge? The day will come when we shall wonder at 
ourselves for having trusted to them, for having taken 
them seriously ; and the more we perceive their hol- 
lowness, the more we shall prize ' the breath and finer 
spirit of knowledge ' ofifered to us by poetry." 



XVIII 

Poetry and Science 

By William Wordsworth ^ 

Taking up the subject, then, upon general grounds, 
let me ask, what is meant by the word Poet ? What is 
a Poet? To whom does he address himself? And 
what language is to be expected from him ? — He is 
a man speaking to men : a man, it is true, endowed 
with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and ten- 
derness, who has a greater knowledge of human na- 
ture, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed 
to be common among mankind ; a man pleased with his 
own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more 
than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; de- 
lighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions 
as manifested in the goings-on of the Universe, and 
habitually impelled to create them where he does not 
find them. To these qualities he has added a disposi- 
tion to be affected more than other men by absent 
things as if they were present; an ability of conjuring 
up in himself passions, which are indeed far from being 

1 These paragraphs are taken from Wordsworth's Preface to the Lyrical 
Ballads, a volume of poems which he published with Coleridge in 1798; 
the Preface appeared first in the second edition in 1800. William Words- 
worth, 1 770-1 850, was, like many of the poets of his day who were ex- 
ploring new fields of poetic thought and feeling, the author of several 
critical treatises in prose, explaining and defending his theories. Among 
many such works of extraordinary interest produced in this period, the 
Preface to the Lyrical Ballads is one of the best. — Editor. 

243 



244 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 

the same as those produced by real events, yet (espe- 
cially in those parts of the general sympathy which are 
pleasing and delightful) do more nearly resemble the 
passions produced by real events, than anything which, 
from the motions of their own minds merely, other 
men are accustomed to feel in themselves : — whence, 
and from practice, he has acquired a greater readiness 
and power in expressing what he thinks and feels, and 
especially those thoughts and feelings which, by his 
own choice, or from the structure of his own mind, 
arise in him without immediate external excitement. 

But whatever portion of this faculty we may suppose 
even the greatest Poet to possess, there cannot be a 
doubt that the language which it will suggest to him, 
must often, in liveliness and truth, fall short of that 
which is uttered by men in real life, under the actual 
pressure of those passions, certain shadows of which 
the Poet thus produces, or feels to be produced, in 
himself. 

However exalted a notion we would wish to cherish 
of the character of a Poet, it is obvious, that while he 
describes and imitates passions, his employment is in 
some degree mechanical, compared with the freedom 
and power of real and substantial action and suffering. 
So that it will be the wish of the Poet to bring his 
feelings near to those of the persons whose feelings he 
describes, nay, for short spaces of time, perhaps, to let 
himself slip into an entire delusion, and even confound 
and identify his own feelings with theirs; modifying 
only the language which is thus suggested to him by 
a consideration that he describes for a particular pur- 
pose, that of giving pleasure. Here, then, he will apply 
the principle of selection which has been already in- 



POETRY AND SCIENCE 245 

sisted upon. He will depend upon this for removing 
what would otherwise be painful or disgusting in the 
passion ; he will feel that there is no necessity to trick 
out or to elevate nature : and, the more industriously 
he applies this principle, the deeper will be his faith 
that no words, which his fancy or imagination can sug- 
gest, will be to be compared with those which are the 
emanations of reality and truth. 

But it may be said by those who do not object to 
the general spirit of these remarks, that, as it is im- 
possible for the Poet to produce upon all occasions 
language as exquisitely fitted for the passion as that 
which the real passion itself suggests, it is proper that 
he should consider himself as in the situation of a 
translator, who does not scruple to substitute excel- 
lencies of another kind for those which are unattain- 
able by him ; and endeavors occasionally to surpass his 
original, in order to make some amends for the general 
inferiority to which he feels that he must submit. But 
this would be to encourage idleness and unmanly de- 
spair. Further, it is the language of men who speak 
of what they do not understand ; who talk of Poetry 
as of a matter of amusement and idle pleasure ; who will 
converse with us as gravely about a taste for Poetry, 
as they express it, as if it were a thing as indifferent 
as a taste for rope-dancing, or Frontiniac or Sherry. 
Aristotle, I have been told, has said, that Poetry is 
the most philosophic of all writing: it is so: its object 
is truth, not individual and local, but general, and 
operative ; not standing upon external testimony, but 
carried alive into the heart by passion ; truth which is 
its own testimony, which gives competence and con- 
fidence to the tribunal to which it appeals, and receives 



246 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 

them from the same tribunal. Poetry is the image of 
man and nature. The obstacles which stand in the 
way of the fidelity of the Biographer and Historian, 
and of their consequent utility, are incalculably greater 
than those which are to be encountered by the Poet 
who comprehends the dignity of his art. The Poet 
writes under one restriction only, namely, the neces- 
sity of giving immediate pleasure to a human Being 
possessed of that information which may be expected 
from him, not as a lawyer, a physician, a mariner, an 
astronomer, or a natural philosopher, but as a Man. 
Except this one restriction, there is no object standing 
between the Poet and the image of things; between 
this, and the Biographer and Historian, there are a 
thousand. 

Nor let this necessity of producing immediate pleas- 
ure be considered as a degradation of the Poet's art. 
It is far otherwise. It is an acknowledgment of the 
beauty of the universe, an acknowledgment the more 
sincere, because not formal, but indirect; it is a task 
light and easy to him who looks at the world in the 
spirit of love : further, it is a homage paid to the 
native and naked dignity of man, to the grand elemen- 
tary principle of pleasure, by which he knows, and 
feels, and lives, and moves. We have no sympathy 
but what is propagated by pleasure: I would not be 
misunderstood ; but wherever we sympathize with pain, 
it will be found that the sympathy is produced and 
carried on by subtle combinations with pleasure. We 
have no knowledge, that is, no general principles drawn 
from the contemplation of particular facts, but what 
has been built up by pleasure, and exists in us by pleas- 
ure alone. The Man of science, the Chemist and 



POETRY AND SCIENCE 247 

Mathematician, whatever difficulties and disgusts they 
may have had to struggle with, know and feel this. 
However painful may be the objects with which the 
Anatomist's knowledge is connected, he feels that his 
knowledge is pleasure ; and where he has no pleasure 
he has no knowledge. What then does the Poet? He 
considers man and the objects that surround him as 
acting and reacting upon each other, so as to produce 
an infinite complexity of pain and pleasure ; he con- 
siders man in his own nature and in his ordinary life 
as contemplating this with a certain quantity of im- 
mediate knowledge, with certain convictions, intuitions, 
and deductions, which from habit acquire the quality 
of intuitions ; he considers him as looking upon this 
complex scene of ideas and sensations, and find- 
ing everywhere objects that immediately excite in him 
sympathies which, from the necessities of his nature, 
are accompanied by an overbalance of enjoyment. 

To this knowledge which all men carry about with 
them, and to these sympathies in which, without any 
other discipline than that of our daily life, we are 
fitted to take delight, the Poet principally directs his 
attention. He considers man and nature as essentially 
adapted to each other, and the mind of man as naturally 
the mirror of the fairest and most interesting proper- 
ties of nature. And thus the Poet, prompted by this 
feeling of pleasure, which accompanies him through 
the whole course of his studies, converses with gen- 
eral nature, with affections akin to those, which, 
through labor and length of time, the Man of science 
has raised up in himself, by conversing with those par- 
ticular parts of nature which are the objects of his 
studies. The knowledge both of the Poet and the Man 



248 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 

of science is pleasure; but the knowledge of the one 
cleaves to us as a necessary part of our existence, our 
natural and unalienable inheritance ; the other is a per- 
sonal and individual acquisition, slow to come to us, 
and by no habitual and direct sympathy connecting 
us with our fellow-beings. The Man of science seeks 
truth as a remote and unknown benefactor; he cher- 
ishes and loves it in his solitude: the Poet, singing a 
song in which all human beings join with him, rejoices 
in the presence of truth as our visible friend and hourly 
companion. Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of 
all knowledge ; it is the impassioned expression which 
is in the countenance of all Science. Emphatically 
may it be said of the Poet, as Shakespeare hath said 
of man, " that he looks before and after." He is the 
rock of defense for human nature; an upholder and 
preserver, carrying everywhere with him relationship 
and love. In spite of difference of soil and climate, 
of language and manners, of laws and customs: in 
spite of things silently gone out of mind, and things 
violently destroyed ; the Poet binds together by passion 
and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as 
it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time. 
The objects of the Poet's thoughts are everywhere; 
though the eyes and senses of man are, it is true, his 
favorite guides, yet he will follow wheresoever he can 
find an atmosphere of sensation in which to move his 
wings. Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge — 
it is as immortal as the heart of man. If the labors 
of Men of science should ever create any material revo- 
lution, direct or indirect, in our condition, and in the 
impressions which we habitually receive, the Poet will 
sleep then no more than at present; he will be ready 



POETRY AND SCIENCE 249 

to follow the steps of the Man of science, not only in 
those general indirect effects, but he will be at his side, 
carrying sensation into the midst of the objects of the 
science itself. The remotest discoveries of the Chem- 
ist, the Botanist, or Mineralogist, will be as proper 
objects of the Poet's art as any upon which it can be 
employed, if the time should ever come when these 
things shall be familiar to us, and the relations under 
which they are contemplated by the followers of these 
respective sciences shall be manifestly and palpably 
material to us as enjoying and suffering beings. If the 
time should ever come when what is now called science, 
thus familiarized to men, shall be ready to put on, as 
it were, a form of flesh and blood, the Poet will lend his 
divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will wel- 
come the Being thus produced, as a dear and genuine 
inmate of the household of man. — It is not, then, to 
be supposed that any one, who holds that sublime 
notion of Poetry which I have attempted to convey, 
will break in upon the sanctity and truth of his pictures 
by transitory and accidental ornaments, and endeavor 
to excite admiration of himself by arts, the: necessity 
of which must manifestly depend upon the assumed 
meanness of his subject. 



250 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 

NOTE TO ESSAY XVIII 

The following paragraph from Sir Frederick Pol- 
lock's Introduction to the Lectures and Essays of W. 
K. Clifford, makes an interesting parallel to Words- 
worth's idea : " It is an open secret to the few who 
know it, but a mystery and a stumbHng-block to the 
many, that Science and Poetry are own sisters ; inso- 
much that in those branches of scientific inquiry which 
are most abstract, most formal, and most remote from 
the grasp of the ordinary sensible imagination, a 
higher power of imagination akin to the creative in- 
sight of the poet is most needed and most fruitful of 
lasting work. This livang and constructive energy 
projects itself out into the world at the same time that 
it assimilates the surrounding world to itself. When 
it is joined with quick perception and delicate sym- 
pathies, it can work the miracle of piercing the barrier 
that separates one mind from another, and becomes a 
personal charm. It can be known only in its opera- 
tion, and is by its very nature incommunicable and in- 
describable. Yet this faculty, when a man is gifted 
with it, seems to gather up the best of his life, so that 
the man always transcends every work shapen and 
sent forth by him ; his presence is full of it, and it 
lightens the air his friends breathe ; it commands, not 
verbal assent to propositions or intellectual acqui- 
escence in arguments, but the conviction of being in 
the sphere of a vital force for which nature must make 
room." 



XIX 

The Liberal Education of the 
Nineteenth Century 

By William P. Atkinson ^ 

The collapse of that classical system of liberal edu- 
cation which has held almost undisputed sway since 
the revival of learning in the sixteenth century, and the 
now generally recognized insufficiency of the theory 
which makes the study of the languages of Greece 
and Rome the sole foundation of the higher education, 
are leading, as all familiar with the educational thought 
of the present day are aware, to the greatest variety of 
speculations as to the system which is destined to 
supersede it. That a theory of liberal education as 
well adapted to the wants of the nineteenth — or, shall 
we not rather say the twentieth — century, as was the 
classical theory to the wants of the sixteenth, has yet 
been elaborated, would be quite too much to affirm. 

1 This paper was read by Professor Atkinson before the National 
Teachers' Association at Elmira, New York, in August, 1873, and printed 
in the Popular Science Monthly in November of that year: it is used 
here by permission of the editor, Professor J. McK. Cattell. Professor 
Atkinson's voluminous footnotes have been omitted from this reprint. 

William Parsons Atkinson, 1820-1890, was Professor of English in the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1868 to 1889. He had a 
classical education at Harvard and taught classics before his appointment 
at the Institute of Technology. He published several papers on the rela- 
tion of classical to scientific and English studies: these essays show that 
his work, though hampered by lack of time and of books and of assist- 
ants, was based upon a lofty and independent conception of the function 
of English in a technical education. — Editor. 

251 



252 WILLIAM P. ATKINSON 

We are living in the midst of a chaos of conflicting 
opinions, and it seems to be the duty of all who think 
at all on a subject on which the vital interests of the 
future so much depend, and especially incumbent on all 
practical teachers to make such contribution as they 
are able, from their studies and reflection or their 
experience, toward the right solution of the prob- 
lem. It is to such a contribution that I now ask 
your attention. 

I begin with a definition of Liberal Education, in 
regard to which I presume we shall not be much 
at variance. The term liberal is opposed to the term 
servile. A liberal education is that education which 
makes a man an intellectual freeman, as opposed to 
that which makes a man a tool, an instrument for the 
accomplishment of some ulterior aim or object. The 
aim of the liberal education of any period is the right 
use of the realized capital of extant knowledge of that 
period, for the training of the whole, or only of some 
privileged part of the rising generation, to act the part 
and perform the duties of free, intellectual, and moral 
beings. So far as the nature of the human mind and 
the foundations of human knowledge remain the same 
from age to age and generation to generation, a liberal 
education is the same thing in every age and genera- 
tion ; so far as the condition of society varies from age 
to age, and as the accumulated capital of extant knowl- 
edge increases, the liberal education of one generation 
will differ from that of another. There are, therefore, 
both constant and variable factors in our problem. It 
is with the variable factors, as modifying our con- 
ception of the liberal education of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, that I have here chiefly to do. 



LIBERAL EDUCATION 253 

I reckon five leading influences which are acting 
powerfully to modify all our old theories, and slowly 
working out a new ideal of liberal education: (i) A 
truer psychology, giving us for the first time a true 
theory of elementary teaching. (2) Progress in the 
science of philology, enabling us to assign their right 
position to the classical languages as elements in liberal 
culture, and giving us, in modern philological science, 
an improved and more powerful teaching instrument. 
(3) The first real attempt to combine republican 
ideas with the theory of liberal education — in other 
words, to make the education of the whole people lib- 
eral, instead of merely the education of certain privi- 
leged classes and protected professions. And when I 
say the whole people, I mean men and women. Noth- 
ing, I will say in passing, to my mind so marks us as 
still educational barbarians, so stamps all our boasted 
culture with illiberality, as an exclusion of the other 
sex from all share in its privileges. No education can 
be truly liberal which is not equally applicable to one 
sex as to the other. (4) As the influence more pro- 
foundly modifying our conceptions of liberal educa- 
tion than any other, I reckon the advent of modern 
physical science. (5) I count among those influences 
the growing perception that art and aesthetic culture 
are equally necessary as an element in all education 
worthy of the name. 

Let me pass to the second influence, which is act- 
ing powerfully to modify all our previous conceptions 
of the subject ; I mean the progress of modern linguistic 
science. I take this next in order because, contrary 
to the current of thought prevailing at the present 



254 WILLIAM P. ATKINSON 

moment, I believe the old doctrine will still be found 
to hold true, even after physical science shall have at 
last found its true place in the new education, that 
the study of that wonderful world of matter, which is 
the stage on which man plays his earthly part, won- 
derful as it is, is yet inferior in dignity and importance 
to the study of the being and doing of the actor who 
plays his part thereon. Scientific studies, though for 
the time being in the ascendant, yet, even when all their 
rights shall be accorded to them, will, in a well-balanced 
system, take their place a little below ethical studies. 
This, I say, as not believing in the current materialistic 
philosophy in any of its forms, but as being an im- 
materialist, as I must phrase it, since we have been 
robbed by unworthy and degrading associations of the 
word spiritualist. But, without raising any question 
of precedence between branches of study which are 
both essential to any true conception of a complete 
education, let me proceed to point out that the progress 
of linguistic science and of modern literature has 
totally transformed the educational character and posi- 
tion of the ethical studies of which they are the 
instrument and the embodiment. When the Revival 
of Learning gave birth to the present classical system 
of literary, or, as I have termed it, ethical liberal study, 
it did so by putting into the hands of scholars not 
merely two grammars as instruments of youthful 
mental discipline, as the advocates of the grindstone- 
system would fain have us believe, but two languages 
that unlocked the stores of a whole new world of 
ethical thought, in the shape of the philosophy, the 
history, and the poetry contained in Greek and Roman 
literature. How assiduously those literatures were 



LIBERAL EDUCATION 255 

studied, how they leavened the whole thought of 
Europe, and mightily contributed to disperse the intel- 
lectual darkness and break the bonds of the spiritual 
despotism of the mediaeval Church, we all know. 
Classical philosophy, history, poetry, and art, nour- 
ished the European mind, and were almost the sole 
foundation of its culture, through all the period dur- 
ing which the Latin and Teutonic races of Western 
Europe were slowly elaborating languages and litera- 
tures of their own. They were thus of necessity the 
main instrument of culture of the schools during the 
period when, save the obsolete scholastic philosophy, 
no other instrument was forthcoming; and I do not 
think it possible to overrate the debt which Western 
Europe owes to them. But gradually their educating 
influence has been absorbed, and in great measure ex- 
hausted, while partially, but by no means wholly, out 
of the nutriment they furnished have sprung the na- 
tional languages and literatures which, as more and 
not less powerful educating instrumentalities, are to 
supersede them. It is to ignore the vast progress of 
the human mind since the days of Erasmus to try 
any longer to make classical learning stand in the same 
relation to the modern student that it stood in to 
Erasmus: and Erasmus, if he were ahve to-day, would 
be the first to abandon the dead pedantries of the past 
for the fountains of new thought he would see flowing 
all round him. 

W^hen I say, then, that I think the languages and 
literatures of Greece and Rome are soon to be aban- 
doned, as the sole or main instruments of that side of 
liberal culture which I have preferred to call ethical 
rather than literary, it is not that I do not fully recog- 



256 IVILLIAM F. ATKINSON 

nize their value and beauty, or the vast service they 
have done in emancipating and training the mind of 
Western Europe : it is not that I do not recognize their 
value as among the specialties of liberal culture now. 
It is only as the sole or chief instruments of literary 
school training that I believe them to be superseded. 
So far from believing that they will be abandoned, I 
believe they will be more diligently and successfully 
studied in the future, when they will be left as a spe- 
cialty in the hands of that small number of students 
who, at any time, in this modern world of ours, will of 
their own free choice pursue them. As a specialty for 
the few, classical studies still have a future before 
them, and we can ill afford to lose the elevating and 
refining influence exercised by their real votaries on 
those who do not directly pursue them ; but as the 
main instruments of liberal culture their day seems 
to me to be nearly over. 

Thus it is that, classical education having dwindled 
into a shadow, our colleges are looking about for a 
remedy, and a class of thinkers, just now, as we know, 
very influential, are looking to the substitution of the 
study of science as the sole remedy. Gentlemen, I 
have been long enough attached to a school of science 
to have been convinced, if I had ever doubted it, that 
science by itself is no remedy ; that as there can never 
again be a liberal education, or the pretense of one, 
without the scientific element, so on the other hand, 
scientific studies alone can never constitute a liberal 
education — scientific can never supersede ethical 
studies as its foundation. What, then, is the true 
remedy? I think it is evident. It is, along with 



LIBERAL EDUCATION 257 

scientific study, of whose true place I shall have more 
to say presently, to accept ethical studies in their new 
form, in the form of modern literatures and modern 
languages, and with classical studies as the special 
and subordinate, and not, as heretofore, the main and 
primary instrument. This is the great change which 
liberal education is silently undergoing, far more than 
it is a change from a literary to a scientific basis. 

I know of no educational fallacy more common and 
more mischievous than that of enormously overrating 
the educating value of the process of acquiring the 
mere form of foreign languages, whether dead or liv- 
ing; yet it is in this barren study that we waste the 
precious time that should be employed, from the very 
beginning of school-life, in acquiring the substance of 
real knowledge. Languages, other than our own, are 
the useful, sometimes the necessary tools for acquir- 
ing knowledge ; in the literatures of other tongues there 
reside elements of culture not to be found, or not to be 
found in the same perfection in our own, which may 
well repay the student who has time and perseverance 
sufficient really to attain them without too great a sac- 
rifice. But to sacrifice an attainable education in not 
attaining them, what is it but to sow the barren sea- 
shore, to travel half a journey, to possess one's self of 
half an instrument useless without the other half. . . . 

I think that we monstrously overrate the educating 
value of the mere process of learning other languages ; 
but with the mother-tongue the case is altogether dif- 
ferent. Here the mastery of form and substance can 
proceed pari passu. The mother-tongue is the only one 
which can stand to our modern liberal education in the 
relation in which the classical tongues stood to the 



258 WILLIAM P. ATKINSON 

scholars of the revival of learning. It might be said 
that Greek and Latin were mother-tongues to them as 
scholars, because it was through them alone that they 
reached the thoughts which really educated them. They 
were not brought up on empty words and barren syn- 
tax; they studied no grammars, for grammars were 
non-existent. Their minds were really nourished on 
the philosophy of Plato, and Cicero's eloquence, and 
Homer's poetry, and the lessons, not the words, they 
found in Tacitus and Thucydides. Now, when we have 
a philosophy, a history, a poetry, a law, an ethics, 
which embody all that is valuable in classical literature, 
together with all the progress of thought has produced 
through these later centuries, we not only fail to use 
them as those older scholars used their older instru- 
ments, really and efficiently, but we equally fail in using 
the older ones. We al)andon both to feed our boys on 
a husk without a kernel. What wonder that our 
higher education is struck with barrenness ! 

When, therefore, I propose modern language-study 
instead of ancient, as a chief instrument of school 
education, I mean much more than the mere substitu- 
tion of the study of some modern language as language, 
for some ancient language as language — German, for 
instance, instead of Greek, as has sometimes been sug- 
gested. This would be the mere semblance of a rem- 
edy, for the difficulty consists in the enormous over- 
rating, by what I have called the grindstone-theory, of 
the educating value of the study of the mere structure 
and vocabulary of any strange language whatever. It 
has sometimes been doubted if we can ever really know 
more than one tongue, and certainly all our deeper 
mental processes go on in that one we know best. If 



LIBERAL EDUCATION 259 

that is a foreign one, it is because we have lost a 
mother to gain a step-mother; and a step-mother she 
will ever remain. What is very certain is, that too 
many of the recipients of our present education, in 
seeking to possess themselves of more than one lan- 
guage, end with having none whatever. Neglecting to 
develop their minds through the instrumentality of 
their mother-tongue, and never, therefore, really 
knowing it, they equally fail in providing themselves 
with any substitute ; with Shakespeare's pedants, '* they 
have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the 
scraps." 

My position, therefore, is that, so far as language- 
study shall form a part of the elementary discipline of 
the liberal education of the future, the centre and pivot 
of it all will hereafter be the scientific study of the 
mother-tongue. . . . But far above and beyond its 
uses as language-study comes the advantage of the 
direct and immediate entrance it gives to those regions 
of thought in which the higher mental discipline really 
lies. Through the direct road of the real study of the 
mother-tongue, and that rhetorical, and, above all, that 
real logical study which accompanies and forms a part 
of it, can the study of what we vaguely denominate 
literature, and that which we are beginning still more 
vaguely to denominate social science, but which yet, 
between them, contain the substance of all we most 
need to know of man as distinct from Nature, be made 
real portions of general knowledge — be transferred 
from being a possession in the hands of the few, to 
be reached only by an abstruse and difificult preparatory 
training, secrets unlocked by a key out of reach of the 
hands of the many, to being a part of the general in- 



26o WILLIAM P. ATKINSON 

heritance of all men. For, to be so, they must be made 
primary and not secondary; in other words, that time 
and strength must be devoted to a fruitful study of 
modern thought and modern literature, which have 
heretofore been wasted in school and college on the 
futile attempt to master ancient thought and ancient 
literature. The rudiments of all those studies must 
be reckoned as the most valuable . . . which in their 
higher departments . . . form the substance of profes- 
sional knowledge, both that of those professions now 
reckoned, and of all those hereafter to be reckoned lib- 
eral. For, what should liberal education be but the 
preparatory general stage for that work of life which 
all honest callings and professions carry on in diverse 
directions afterwards? What is a professional educa- 
tion but a liberal education taking a special direction? 
Can it now be said, with any truth, that our nomi- 
nally educated young men go out into the world 
equipped with that general knowledge of the sciences 
of law and government, and political economy, with 
that knowledge of ethics and philosophy, with that 
acquaintance with modern history and of the condi- 
tion of the world they live in, and with that real taste 
for modern literature, which should form the equip- 
ment of every man calling himself educated ? We shall 
have to give a negative answer, just so long as we do 
not look upon all these as the truly disciplinary studies, 
and the elements of all these as the true elementary 
studies, the very school-studies fitted, above all others, 
for maturing the youthful mind, and filling it with true 
wisdom. So long as we insist upon approaching them 
through the operose and roundabout method of dead- 
language studies, school-days will flee away, and the 



LIBERAL EDUCATION 261 

object will not be accomplished. The great vice of 
our education, as has been well said, is its indirectness. 

Combining the ideas which I have thus presented — 
(i) that the study of foreign languages as languages, 
whether dead or living, holds a place in our present 
education-philosophy quite out of proportion to its 
real value and importance, and that it is the discipline 
of philosophy which we are indirectly aiming at, be- 
hind and through the discipline of language; (2) that 
it is through one tongue and not many that that dis- 
cipline can best be imparted, inasmuch as that is the 
only one that can or will ever, by the majority of 
men, be really mastered; and, (3) that now, for the 
first time, there is the possibility, through the progress 
of modern linguistic science, of a scientific and sys- 
tematic study of the mother-tongue — I arrive at the 
conclusion that we are presently to have, as a substi- 
tute for the exclusive or almost exclusive use of 
classical languages and literatures, as the main discip- 
linary element in liberal education, a systematic study 
of the English language and a recognition of its litera- 
ture as primary, not secondary. . . . 

That . . . brings me to my next point, and the 
third new ingredient in the liberal education of the 
future, the element contributed by republicanism. I 
have said that the science of education was still in its 
infancy; I believe that it is only as a part of republi- 
can institutions that it can reach maturity. For the 
only true liberal education is the education of man 
as man ; the only tndy liberal system is that which 
can be applied to a whole nation, and such a system is 
only possible as a part of republican institutions. And, 
when we consider how short a time we have been 



262 WILLIAM P. ATKINSON 

living under them, and how crude and imperfect they 
still are, it is not strange that they have not yet pro- 
duced what will be rather one of their maturest than 
one of their earliest fruits, a truly liberal education- 
system. 

The history of our errors in regard to liberal educa- 
tion is a very plain one. They are the legacy of the 
mother-country from which we came, a mother- 
country which is just beginning to correct her own 
errors, even by the light of our limited experience. I 
wish to point out and emphasize the fact that republi- 
canism revolutionizes our very conception of liberal 
education. All forms of liberal education of the past, 
and pre-eminently the one we borrowed from England, 
were forms of exclusive class-education. The idea of 
caste was involved in their very conception, to such a 
degree that the phrase, the liberal education of the 
people, was a contradiction in terms. The antithesis 
was, popular versus liberal education. There was the 
illiberal or servile education of the masses, designed to 
fit them for the humble station in which it had pleased 
Providence to place them, and to content them there- 
with; there was the liberal education of the exclusive 
learned professions, and the exclusive aristocratic 
class, which was liberal by virtue of its being the edu- 
cation of the rulers and not the ruled. Now, repub- 
licanism, by converting the people into rulers, transfers 
to them the claim to a liberal education, which shall be 
universal. A transfer of the power alone, without a 
transfer of the privilege and the opportunity neces- 
sary to prepare for the exercise of it, cannot but be 
disastrous. If republicanism is to remain republican- 
ism, and not degenerate into oligarchy or plutocracy, 



LIBERAL EDUCATION 263 

or end in anarchy, there must be one homogeneous 
education-system for all, and that one the highest 
attainable. The line of demarcation between liberal 
and illiberal must be obliterated, and what cannot be 
called liberal will be seen to be no education at all, but 
[Only a miserable counterfeit, by which privileged 
classes strive to perpetuate obsolete distinctions and 
indefensible abuses. For a republic, there can be but 
one system, and one set of schools ; its education, begun 
on the lowest benches of its national primary schools, 
will one day be completed in the halls of its national 
universities. There will be no question as to the rela- 
tive dignity of protected and unprotected professions, 
or callings, or classes, but all will be reckoned liberal 
which train and educate the faculties of man as man. 

Now, the only conception of a liberal education that 
will satisfy these new conditions, the only conception 
of an education capable of becoming national and uni- 
versal, at the same time that it is liberal, is that of a 
training of the national mind through the mother- 
tongue as the chief, and other tongues as the subor- 
dinate instruments, in the elements of all those 
branches of knowledge which, used in their rudiments 
as elements of general training, will develop, in their 
higher stages, into the objects of professional pursuits. 
Is there any other distinction than this between general 
and professional? In the infancy of knowledge, all 
callings, trades, and professions, are mysteries, whose 
secrets are carefully guarded from the uninitiated. 
Every mechanic belongs to his trade-guild, and has his 
trade-secrets. When Philip of Burgundy destroyed 
the little town of Dinant, in the Low Countries, the art 
of making copper vessels became, for the time being, 



264 WILLIAM P. ATKINSON 

a lost art. With the progress of general intelligence 
mystery falls away from simpler occupations, but still 
attaches to what are called the learned professions. 
The layman has nothing to do with the study of the 
science of theology : that must be expounded to him 
by his priest. The layman has nothing to do with the 
science of medicine : he must be cured, or, more prob- 
ably, killed, secundum artem, by his physician. The 
layman has nothing to do with the science of the law : 
it is his business to get into lawsuits, and it is the 
lawyer's secret how to extricate him. But these super- 
stitions, the relics of an age of popular ignorance, are 
in their turn disappearing, as just ideas of what con- 
stitutes real knowledge begin to penetrate the minds 
of the whole people. It is seen that, so far from being 
mysterious, such knowledge Is the very substance and 
material of sound education for all men ; and the lay- 
man will no longer allow himself to be led blindfold 
by priest, or lawyer, or physician, for there is no longer 
any magical sacredness in their callings. And thus it 
comes about that a knowledge of physiology, which 
will help save the patient from any need of a physician ; 
a knowledge of law, that shall obviate the necessity 
for lawsuits; a knowledge of political science and 
history worthy of men who have become their own 
rulers ; a knowledge of political economy, that shall 
raise the honorable calling of the merchant to the dig- 
nity of a liberal profession ; a knowledge of theology 
that shall save us the degrading spectacle of the un- 
christian quarrels of bigoted and superstitious sects — 
are reckoned more and more to be essential elements 
in all education. It is only on sound general knowl- 
edge, disseminated through the whole people by a 



LIBERAL EDUCATION 265 

liberal education of the whole people, that we shall 
ever build up professions, in regard to which we are 
not forced to entertain a doubt as to whether they are 
not on the whole more of a curse to us than a blessing. 
And an education of this sort must be begun in the 
primary school, must have for its instrument the 
mother-tongue. It cannot be based on the study of 
Greek particles, or any amount of skill, either in the 
reading or the manufacture of Latin verses. 

I come now to the study of Physical Science, as 
from this time forward destined to play a wholly 
new part in our system of liberal education. . . , 
I am far from believing that its true place, as a 
factor in the new education, has yet been deter- 
mined. While, on the one hand, among the old high- 
and-dry advocates of the grindstone-system, certain 
merits and a subordinate place are beginning to be 
grudgingly allowed it, we are in danger, on the other 
hand, in this new country of ours, whose vast material 
resources are waiting for development through its 
instrumentality, rather of overrating than underrating 
its purely educational function. It is not as an eco- 
nomical instrument for the development of material 
wealth that I have here to deal with it, though that 
is a very important aspect, but considered as a factor 
in a system of education, and, as such, I claim for it 
no monopoly, but only a place as the indispensable 
complement to those ethical and linguistic studies 
which have heretofore monopolized the title of a liberal 
education, and which, from the absence of science from 
that form of education, have been reduced to their 
present effete and impotent condition. It is to the 



266 WILLIAM P. ATKINSON 

incorporation into it of the study of science that we 
are to look as the source of new Hfe-blood. 

You will not expect me to attempt to deal here with 
the great subject which forever occupies the minds of 
speculative thinkers, and never more than at the 
present moment — the true relations of the world of 
matter and the world of mind. That is too large a 
subject to be dealt with, though upon right views 
regarding it will greatly depend the correctness even 
of our educational theories. I will only say, that 
though I am as far as possible from being an adherent 
of any form of materialism, yet I believe that physical 
science is destined to be the great instrument of these 
modern days to give new forms to our philosophy and 
our theology — to give new forms to the same ever- 
lasting problems, but not to give us new philosophy or 
new theology. It will but cast old truths in new 
moulds, while it explodes old superstitions by adding 
new truths to the old ones. Our conservatives may 
spare their anxieties. Not a truth the world gains is 
ever lost again ; but they who, blindly believing they 
have all truth, oppose the new form which science is 
giving to all knowledge, will soon find themselves side 
by side with those old Dunsemen who could not believe 
in the last revival of learning. 

If the study of modern science did not call for the 
exercise of all the highest faculties of man; if it did 
not give an exercise such as no other study gives to his 
reasoning as well as his observing powers ; if without 
it the very study of language itself did not become 
empty and barren ; if a knowledge of it were not neces- 
sary to the solution of all the profoundest philosoph- 



LIBERAL EDUCATION 267 

ical problems with which the mind of man in these 
generations is occupied — then, indeed, a question might 
be raised as to the propriety of its introduction into 
the curriculum of liberal study. But if it is this, and 
more than all this, then it claims more than a subor- 
dinate place; it is no toy for idle hours, no subject to 
fill up gaps and intervals of time. It claims a right 
to no less than a full half of all available time and 
power ; of time for training the student's senses — all 
left by our older training in worse than Egyptian dark- 
ness — of power to be employed in training the reason- 
ing faculties, by processes as rigorous as any the older 
studies can boast of. Nothing less than this will 
satisfy the demands of science as an element in mod- 
ern liberal education. 

But the chief influence of modern science upon lib- 
eral education will be its ethical influence. Its discov- 
eries are transforming man's conception of the earth he 
lives on, and of his history and his work upon it. 
Before man acquires the control of matter, through as- 
certainment of the laws that govern it, his life on earth 
is poor, narrow, and full of hardship, and his earthly 
relations full of pain. So long as that state continues, 
life on earth must seem to him a small matter, and its 
opportunities for growth not much worth considering ; 
it is only here and there that a philosopher in his closet 
attains to some realization of the capacities that lie 
hidden in it. War and savage occupations consume 
the days of the mass of men, and no culture is possible 
save the perverted culture of the cloister. But the 
advent of physical science means the emancipation of 
the masses into the privileges of intellectual life. From 



268 WILLIAM P. ATKINSON 

a battle-ground, the earth is transformed into a school- 
room, written all over with hieroglyphics, no longer 
mysterious, but to which mankind have found the key : 
and, with the right use of the secrets thus unfolded, 
will come to the mass of men that accession of material 
wealth which will give the leisure and opportunities 
that have heretofore been the monopoly of privileged 
classes. 

It is not wonderful that men, at first, are carried 
away with the contemplation of its lower uses, even 
sometimes to the making them the sole end of educa- 
tion. It is but a reaction from the opposite extreme, 
only a dazzling of eyes with a flood of new light. Pres- 
ently we shall look about us, and find the old relations 
of things not greatly altered. INIatter is not going to 
supplant mind because we are learning so much more 
about it ; whether we understand or do not understand 
the laws that govern it, matter remains the servant of 
mind, to educate it and do its bidding. The higher 
uses of science will still be spiritual uses. It has not 
come into the world merely to carry us faster through 
space, merely that we may sleep more softly and eat 
and drink more luxuriously, nor will education become 
the mere teaching how to do these things. It is with 
the spiritual educating function alone that we have to 
deal when we consider it as an element in liberal 
education. 

And thus one great result of the new form into which 
modern science is casting all our conceptions of educa- 
tion will be a vastly higher estimate of the educating 
value of those pursuits in life which are concerned with 
material things, and a distinct recognition of them as 
included among the liberal professions. It is inter- 



LIBERAL EDUCATION 269 

esting to observe how the list of Hberal professions 
enlarges with the advance of civilization. At first the 
priest is the divinely-appointed monopolist of all 
higher knowledge; by degrees he is joined by the law- 
yer, as the interpreter still of a divinely-established 
code; it is much later and only after a certain amount 
of progress has been made in physical knowledge that 
the importance of his function raises the physician's 
art to the dignity of a liberal profession ; and that more 
at first through a superstitious belief in the power 
of his spells and his magic than from respect to the 
small reality of his science. Now that science has so 
far entered into other callings as to make them worthy 
fields for the exercise of the highest faculties, all those 
pursuits which have for their aim the improvement 
of man's earthly condition will take their due rank in 
the list of liberal professions, and the chemist, the 
engineer, the architect, and the merchant, will have 
their appropriate liberal educations as much as the 
clergyman, the lawyer, or the physician. It may safely 
be affirmed that that view of earthly life of mediaeval 
ascetics which has left its traces so deeply imprinted 
in much of our sectarian theology is fast vanishing 
like an ugly dream forever. The intellectual and moral 
aspect of material pursuits is fast gaining, through the 
significance given to them by modern science, a pre- 
dominance over their mere material aspect. The 
worker in material things is more and more, as the 
days go by, compelled to be an intellectual being even 
in order to be a worker, and it is because the study 
of and working in material things now give scope for 
the energies of great intellects, that they more and 
more absorb them. Whoever continues to believe in the 



270 WILLIAM P. ATKINSON 

antithesis between matter and spirit, and insists upon 
looking on the world of material things as of necessity 
the world of the devil, must see in this tendency only 
disaster to all our higher interests; but whoever sees 
that it is the true function of modern science to spir- 
itualize material things by enabling us to put them to 
higher uses, will see in science not the great antagonist 
but the great hope of the religion and the philosophy 
of the future. 

The advocates of the classical theory are never 
weary of reproaching their opponents with opinions 
which, as they say, degrade the dignity of true learning, 
by making it subservient to mere utilitarian aims. If 
to try by knowledge to make this world a better place 
to live in, and to teach men how to make the highest and 
best use of it be utilitarianism, then I make bold to say 
that any knowledge that cannot make good its claim 
to such usefulness is worse than utilitarian, for it is 
useless knowledge. The charge that is meant to be 
brought is this, that none but the advocates of classical 
learning have or can have the higher ends of life in 
view in planning schemes of education ; that all other 
systems look solely to the stomach or the pocket. I do 
not know whether such charges are not too hackneyed to 
waste words on ; certainly I can conceive of no lower 
form of utilitarian abuse of education than the pursuit 
of fellowships by the cramming of Greek and mathe- 
matics for the competitive examinations of an English 
university. On the other hand, the truly liberal learn- 
ing of England is to be found more than anywhere else 
at this moment with that noble band of students of 
science who are virtually excluded from all such pre- 
ferments. It is not a difference in studies that con- 



LIBERAL EDUCATION 271 

stitutes them liberal or illiberal ; it is a difference in the 
spirit in which all studies may be pursued. The study 
of chemistry and the study of Greek particles may be 
equally base or equally noble, according as they are 
pursued worthily or unworthily, with a selfish eye to 
the loaves and fishes, or with an aim at the higher 
rewards of true culture, and the higher advancement 
of man's estate. But I think we may well leave aside 
this stupid charge of utilitarianism. It comes nowa- 
days only from those benighted pedants who are wholly 
ignorant of the true spirit of modern science. 

I have left myself no room, even if I were compe- 
tent, to speak of the last ingredient in any just scheme 
of modern liberal education — the study of art, aesthetic 
culture. I fear there will be abundance of time to 
develop that side of the question in this country before 
it is in any danger of becoming a practical one. Yet, 
in the shape of elementary drawing, the rudiments of 
art are beginning to take their proper place in our 
schools as a necessary and indispensable element of all 
real education, and the art galleries and the foreign 
musicians of a few of our older cities are beginning 
to exert their influence, if a slight one, in introducing 
higher ideas of the importance of art into our new 
country. They will have but a limited influence, how- 
ever, till the study of the fine arts takes its proper 
place among us as a necessary element in every con- 
ception of true education. 

There is one form of art-study, and that, perhaps, 
the highest, which is open to all, even to the humblest 
student, and the most elementary school, and that is 
the study of poetry. It is a prime element in any 
conception of a liberal education, which shall take as 



272 WILLIAM P. ATKINSON 

its chief instrument of language-training the mother- 
tongue, that the real study of English poetry will take 
the place of the pretended study of classical poetry. 
When that time comes, we may expect to see the great 
poets of our native tongue exerting the same influence 
in the culture and training of our children that Homer 
and ^schylus really exercised over that of the Greeks. 
We shall not know what that influence is capable of 
becoming till we have a real study of English, in place 
of a sham study of classical literature. The great 
Greek philosopher says that poetry is truer than his- 
tory. Sure I am that we shall one day come to see 
that in neglecting to train and cultivate the imagina- 
tion, we are neglecting the most powerful of all the 
faculties. 

Ladies and gentlemen, I have thus given you, very 
feebly and imperfectly, an outline of a scheme of lib- 
eral education, applicable to a whole free people, which 
shall use that people's own language on the one hand, 
and the great instrument of modern science on the 
other, as its chief disciplinary instruments, in lieu of the 
obsolescent scheme for a liberal class education, based 
upon the study of dead languages as its chief educating 
instrument. As a means for realizing that scheme for 
the liberal education of the whole people, I believe 
that we must sooner or later have in this our republic 
one homogeneous system of free schools, from the 
lowest to the highest. The first step of that education 
will be taken from the benches of the primary school, 
its last lessons learned in the lecture-rooms and labora- 
tories of universities, free from all trammels of sec- 
tarian narrowness or class distinctions. It will be from 
first to last a homogeneous, logically compacted, con- 



LIBERAL EDUCATION 273 

sistent training in all available knowledge, to all at- 
tainable wisdom, free to all men and all women to pur- 
sue to the extent the faculties God has endowed them 
with will carry them. It is a Utopian vision, you will 
say, this of popular liberal education. Say rather it 
is the necessary safeguard and supplement of free in- 
stitutions ; to despair of it is to despair of the republic. 



XX 

Books Which Have Influenced Me 

By Robert Louis Stevenson ^ 

The Editor has somewhat insidiously laid a trap 
for his correspondents, the question put appearing 
at first so innocent, truly cutting so deep. It is 
not, indeed, until after some reconnaissance and review 
that the writer awakes to find himself engaged upon 
something in the nature of autobiography, or, per- 
haps worse, upon a chapter in the life of that little, 
beautiful brother whom we once all had, and whom 
we have all lost and mourned, the man we ought 
to have been, the man we hoped to be. But when 
word has been passed (even to an editor), it should, 
if possible, be kept; and if sometimes I am wise and 

1 " Books Which Have Influenced Me " was printed first in the Brit- 
ish Weekly, May 13, 1887, and later in the same year it was included in 
a volume with articles by various other men on the same topic. It is 
printed in current editions of Stevenson's works in the volume Essays in 
the Art of Writing, and is reproduced here by permission of Charles 
Scribner's Sons, Publishers. 

Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894, was the son and grandson of two 
well known light-house engineers in Scotland. Stevenson loved himself 
an active out-door life and intended to be an engineer, but his health 
proved too delicate, and, after a half-hearted attempt to study law, he 
took up the profession of letters. He was always a traveller, he tried 
many climates in search of health, and in 1890 he settled in Samoa in 
the Pacific Ocean, where he lived the rest of his life. His novels and 
essays are well known and rightly admired, but nothing in them is finer 
than the courage and cheerfulness with which he fought the long fight 
against disease which made up his life. — Editor. 

274 



THE INFLUENCE OF BOOKS 275 

say too little, and sometimes weak and say too much, 
the blame must lie at the door of the person who 
entrapped me. 

The most influential books, and the truest in their 
influence, are works of fiction. They do not pin the 
reader to a dogma, which he must afterwards dis- 
cover to be inexact; they do not teach him a lesson, 
which he must afterwards unlearn. They repeat, 
they rearrange, they clarify the lessons of life; they 
disengage us from ourselves, they constrain us to the 
acquaintance of others; and they show us the web 
of experience, not as we can see it for ourselves, but 
with a singular change — that monstrous, consuming 
ego of ours being, for the nonce, struck out. To be 
so, they must be reasonably true to the human 
comedy; and any work that is so serves the turn 
of instruction. But the course of our education is 
answered best by those poems and romances where 
we breathe a magnanimous atmosphere of thought 
and meet generous and pious characters. Shake- 
speare has served me best. Few living friends have 
had upon me an influence so strong for good as 
Hamlet or Rosalind. The last character, already 
well beloved in the reading, I had the good fortune 
to see, I must think, in an impressionable hour, played 
by Mrs. Scott Siddons. Nothing has ever more moved, 
more delighted, more refreshed me ; nor has the influ- 
ence quite passed away. Kent's brief speech over the 
dying Lear had a great effect upon my mind, and was 
the burthen of my reflections for long, so profoundly, 
so touchingly generous did it appear in sense, so over- 
powering in expression. Perhaps my dearest and best 
friend outside of Shakespeare is D'Artagnan — the 



276 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

elderly D'x\rtagnan of the Vicomte de Bragelonne. I 
know not a more human soul, nor, in his way, a finer; 
I shall be very sorry for the man who is so much of 
a pedant in morals that he cannot learn from the Cap- 
tain of Musketeers. Lastly, I must name the Pilgrim's 
Progress, a book that breathes of every beautiful and 
valuable emotion. 

But of works of art little can be said ; their influ- 
ence is profound and silent, like the influence of 
nature ; they mould by contact ; we drink them up 
like water, and are bettered, yet know not how. It 
is in books more specifically didactic that we can 
follow out the effect, and distinguish and weigh and 
compare. A book which has been very influential 
upon me fell early into my hands, and so may stand 
first, though I think its influence was only sensible 
later on, and perhaps still keeps growing, for it is 
a book not easily outlived : the Essais of Montaigne. 
That temperate and genial picture of life is a great 
gift to place in the hands of persons of to-day ; they 
will find in these smiling pages a magazine of hero- 
ism and wisdom, all of an antique strain ; they will 
have their " linen decencies " and excited orthodoxies 
fluttered, and will (if they have any gift of reading) 
perceive that these have not been fluttered without 
some excuse and ground of reason; and (again 
if they have any gift of reading) they will end 
by seeing that this old gentleman was in a dozen 
ways a finer fellow, and held in a dozen ways a nobler 
view of life, than they or their contemporaries. 

The next book, in order of time, to influence me, 
was the New Testament, and in particular the Gospel 
according to St. Matthew. I believe it would startle 



THE INFLUENCE OF BOOKS 277 

and move any one if they could make a certain effort 
of imagination and read it freshly like a book, not 
droningly and dully like a portion of the Bible. Any 
one would then be able to see in it those truths which 
we are all courteously supposed to know and all 
modestly refrain from applying. But upon this sub- 
ject it is perhaps better to be silent. 

I come next to Whitman's Leaves of Grass, a book 
of singlar service, a book which tumbled the world 
upside down for me, blew into space a thousand 
cobwebs of genteel and ethical illusion, and, having 
thus shaken my tabernacle of lies, set me back again 
upon a strong foundation of all the original and 
manly virtues. But it is, once more, only a book 
for those w^ho have the gift of reading. I will be 
very frank — I believe it is so with all good books 
except, perhaps, fiction. The average man lives, 
and must live, so wholly in convention, that gun- 
powder charges of the truth are more apt to dis- 
compose than to invigorate his creed. Either he cries 
out upon blasphemy and indecency, and crouches the 
closer round that little idol of part-truths and part- 
conveniences which is the contemporary deity, or he is 
convinced by what is new, forgets what is old, and 
becomes truly blasphemous and indecent himself. New 
truth is only useful to supplement the old ; rough truth 
is only wanted to expand, not to destroy, our civil and 
often elegant conventions. He who cannot judge had 
better stick to fiction and the daily papers. There he 
will get little harm, and, in the first at least, some 
good. 

Close upon the back of my discovery of Whitman, 
I came under the influence of Herbert Spencer. No 



278 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

more persuasive rabbi exists, and few better. How- 
much of his vast structure will bear the touch of time, 
how much is clay and how much brass, it were too 
curious to inquire. But his words, if dry, are always 
manly and honest ; there dwells in his pages a spirit of 
highly abstract joy, plucked naked like an algebraic 
symbol but still joyful; and the reader will find there 
a caput mortuum of piety, with little indeed of its love- 
liness, but with most of its essentials ; and these two 
qualities make him a wholesome, as his intellectual 
vigor makes him a bracing, writer. I should be much 
of a hound if I lost my gratitude to Herbert Spencer. 
Goethe's Life, by Lewes, had a great importance 
for me when it first fell into my hands — a strange 
instance of the partiality of man's good and man's evil. 
I know no one whom I less admire than Goethe ; he 
seems a very epitome of the sins of genius, breaking 
open the doors of private life, and wantonly wounding 
friends, in that crowning offence of IVerther, and in his 
own character a mere pen-and-ink Napoleon, conscious 
of the rights and duties of superior talents as a Spanish 
inquisitor was conscious of the rights and duties .of 
his office. And yet in his fine devotion to his art, in 
his honest and serviceable friendship for Schiller, what 
lessons are contained ! Biography, usually so false to 
its office, does here for once perform for us some of 
the work of fiction, reminding us, that is, of the truly 
mingled tissue of man's nature, and how huge faults 
and shining virtues cohabit and persevere in the same 
character. History serves us well to this effect, but 
in the originals, not in the pages of the popular 
epitomiser, who is bound, by the very nature of his 
task, to make us feel the difference of epochs instead 



THE INFLUENCE OF BOOKS 279 

of the essential identity of man, and even in the 
originals only to those who can recognise their own 
human virtues and defects in strange forms, often 
inverted and under strange names, often interchanged. 
Martial is a poet of no good repute, and it gives a 
man new thoughts to read his works dispassionately, 
and find in this unseemly jester's serious passages the 
image of a kind, wise, and self-respecting gentleman. 
It is customary, I suppose, in reading Martial, to leave 
out these pleasant verses ; I never heard of them, at 
least, until I found them for myself ; and this partiality 
is one among a thousand things that help to build up 
our distorted and hysterical conception of the great 
Roman Empire. 

This brings us by a natural transition to a very 
noble book — the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. 
The dispassionate gravity, the noble forgetfulness of 
self, the tenderness of others, that are there expressed 
and were practised on so great a scale in the life of 
its writer, make this book a book quite by itself. No 
one can read it and not be moved. Yet it scarcely 
or rarely appeals to the feelings — those very mobile, 
those not very trusty parts of man. Its address lies 
further back : its lesson comes more deeply home ; 
when you have read, you carry away with you a 
memory of the man himself ; it is as though you had 
touched a loyal hand, looked into brave eyes, and 
made a noble friend; there is another bond on you 
thenceforward, binding you to life and to the love of 
virtue. 

Wordsworth should perhaps come next. Every one 
has been influenced by Wordsworth, and it is hard to 
tell precisely how. A certain innocence, a rugged 



28o ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

austerity of joy, a sight of the stars, " the silence that 
is in the lonely hills," something of the cold thrill of 
dawn, cling to his work and give it a particular address 
to what is best in us. I do not know that you learn 
a lesson ; you need not — Mill did not — agree with 
any one of his beliefs; and yet the spell is cast. Such 
are the best teachers ; a dogma learned is only a new 
error — the old one was perhaps as good; but a spirit 
communicated is a perpetual possession. These best 
teachers climb beyond teaching to the plane of art ; 
it is themselves, and what is best in themselves, that 
they communicate. 

I should never forgive myself if I forgot The Egoist. 
It is art, if you like, but it belongs purely to didactic 
art, and from all the novels I have read (and I have 
read thousands) stands in a place by itself. Here is a 
Nathan for the modern David ; here is a book to send 
the blood into men's faces. Satire, the angry picture 
of human faults, is not great art ; we can all be angry 
with our neighbor; what we want is to be shown, not 
his defects, of which we are too conscious, but his 
merits, to which we are too blind. And The Egoist 
is a satire ; so much must be allowed ; but it is a satire 
of a singular quality, which tells you nothing of that 
obvious mote, which is engaged from first to last with 
that invisible beam. It is yourself that is hunted 
down ; these are your own faults that are dragged into 
the day and numbered, with lingering relish, with cruel 
cunning and precision, A young friend of Mr. Mere- 
dith's (as I have the story) came to him in an agony. 
" That is too bad of you," he cried. " Willoughby is 
me ! " " No, my dear fellow," said the author ; " he 
is all of us." I have read The Egoist five or six 



THE INFLUENCE OF BOOKS 281 

times myself, and I mean to read it again; for I am 
like the young friend of the anecdote — I think Wil- 
loughby an unmanly but a very serviceable exposure 
of myself. 

I suppose, when I am done, I shall find that I have 
forgotten much that was most influential, as I see 
already I have forgotten Thoreau, and Ilazlitt, whose 
paper " On the Spirit of Obligations " was a turning- 
point in my life, and Penn, whose little book of aphor- 
isms had a brief but strong effect on me, and Mitford's 
Talcs of Old Japan, wherein I learned for the first time 
the proper attitude of any rational man to his country's 
laws — a secret found, and kept, in the Asiatic islands. 
That I should commemorate all is more than I can hope 
or the Editor could ask. It will be more to the point, 
after having said so much upon improving books, to 
say a word or two about the improvable reader. The 
gift of reading, as I have called it, is not very common, 
nor very generally understood. It consists, first of 
all, in a vast intellectual endowment — a free grace, I 
find I must call it — by which a man rises to understand 
that he is not punctually right, nor those from whom he 
differs absolutely wrong. He may hold dogmas ; he 
may hold them passionately; and he may know that 
others hold them but coldly, or hold them differently, 
or hold them not at all. Well, if he has the gift of 
reading, these others will be full of meat for him. 
They will see the other side of propositions and the 
other side of virtues. He need not change his dogma 
for that, but he may change his reading of that dogma, 
and he must supplement and correct his deductions 
from it. A human truth, which is always very much 
a lie, hides as much of life as it displays. It is men 



282 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

who hold another truth, or, as it seems to us, perhaps, 
a dangerous He, who can extend our restricted field 
of knowledge, and rouse our drowsy consciences. 
Something that seems quite new, or that seems inso- 
lently false or very dangerous, is the test of a reader. 
If he tries to see what it means, what truth excuses it, 
he has the gift, and let him read. If he is merely 
hurt, or offended, or exclaims upon his author's folly, 
he had better take to the daily papers; he will never 
be a reader. 

And here, with the aptest illustrative force, after 
I have laid down my part-truth, I must step in with 
its opposite. For, after all, we are vessels of a very 
limited content. Not all men can read all books; it 
is only in a chosen few that any man will find his 
appointed food ; and the fittest lessons are the most 
palatable, and make themselves welcome to the mind. 
A writer learns this early, and it is his chief support; 
he goes on unafraid, laying down the law; and he 
is sure at heart that most of what he says is demon- 
strably false, and much of a mingled strain, and 
some hurtful, and very little good for service; but 
he is sure besides that when his words fall into the 
hands of any genuine reader, they will be weighed 
and winnowed, and only that which suits will be 
assimilated ; and when they fall into the hands of 
one who cannot intelligently read, they come there 
quite silent and inarticulate, falling upon deaf ears, 
and his secret is kept as if he had not written. 



XXI 

Pulvis et Umbra 

By Robert Louis Stevenson ^ 

We look for some reward of our endeavors and 
are disappointed; not success, not happiness, not even 
peace of conscience, crowns our ineffectual efforts to 
do well. Our frailties are invincible, our virtues bar- 
ren ; the battle goes sore against us to the going down 
of the sun. The canting moralist tells us of right and 
wrong; and we look abroad, even on the face of our 
small earth, and find them change with every climate, 
and no country where some action is not honored for 
a virtue and none where it is not branded for a vice ; 
and we look in our experience, and find no vital con- 
gruity in the wisest rules, but at the best a municipal 
fitness. It is not strange if we are tempted to despair 
of good. We ask too much. Our religions and mor- 
alities have been trimmed to flatter us, till they are all 
emasculate and sentimentalized, and only please and 
weaken. Truth is of a rougher strain. In the harsh 
face of life, faith can read a bracing gospel. The 
human race is a thing more ancient than the ten com- 

1 " Pulvis et Umbra," Stevenson's " Darwinian Sermon," was first 
printed in Scribner's Magazine, April, 1888. It is here reprinted from 
his volume, Across the Plains, by kind permission of Charles Scribner's 
Sons. For a brief account of Stevenson see Note at the beginning of 
the preceding essay. — Editor. 

283 



284 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

mandments ; and the bones and revolutions of the 
Kosmos, in whose joints we are but moss and fungus, 
more ancient still. 

Of the Kosmos in the last resort, science reports 
many doubtful things and all of them appalling. There 
seems no substance to this solid globe on which we 
stamp : nothing but symbols and ratios. Symbols and 
ratios carry us and bring us forth and beat us down; 
gravity that swings the incommensurable suns and 
worlds through space, is but a figment varying inversely 
as the squares of distances ; and the suns and worlds 
themselves, imponderable figures of abstraction, NH3 
and HoO. Consideration dares not dwell upon this 
view ; that way madness lies ; science carries us into 
zones of speculation, where there is no habitable city 
for the mind of man. 

But take the Kosmos with a grosser faith, as our 
senses give it us. We behold space sown with rota- 
tory islands, suns and worlds and the shards and 
wrecks of systems: some, like the sun, still blazing; 
some rotting, like the earth ; others, like the moon, 
stable in desolation. All of these we take to be made 
of something we call matter : a thing which no analysis 
can help us to conceive ; to whose incredible properties 
no familiarity can reconcile our minds. This stuff, 
when not purified by the lustration of fire, rots un- 
cleanly into something we call life ; seized through all 
its atoms with a pediculous malady ; swelling in tumors 
that become independent, sometimes even (by an ab- 
horrent prodigy) locomotory; one splitting into mil- 
lions, millions cohering into one, as the malady pro- 
ceeds through varying stages. This vital putrescence 



PULVIS ET UMBRA 285 

of the dust, used as we are to it, yet strikes us with 
occasional disgust, and the profusion of worms in a 
piece of ancient turf, or the air of a marsh darkened 
with insects, will sometimes check our breathing so that 
we aspire for cleaner places. But none is clean : the 
moving sand is infected with lice ; the pure spring, 
where it bursts out of the mountain, is a mere issue 
of worms ; even in the hard rock the crystal is 
forming. 

In two main shapes this eruption covers the coun- 
tenance of the earth : the animal and the vegetable : 
one in some degree the inversion of the other : the 
second rooted to the spot ; the first coming detached 
out of its natal mud, and scurrying abroad with the 
myriad feet of insects or towering into the heavens 
on the wings of birds: a thing so inconceivable that, 
if it be well considered, the heart stops. To what 
passes with the anchored vermin, we have little clue : 
doubtless they have their joys and sorrows, their 
delights and killing agonies : it appears not how. 
But of the locomotory, to which we ourselves belong, 
we can tell more. These share with us a thousand 
miracles: the miracles of sight, of hearing, of the 
projection of sound, things that bridge space ; the 
miracles of memory and reason, by which the present 
is conceived, and when it is gone, its image kept 
living in the brains of man and brute ; the miracle 
of reproduction, with its imperious desires and stag- 
gering consequences. And to put the last touch upon 
this mountain mass of the revolting and the incon- 
ceivable, all these prey upon each other, lives tearing 
other lives in pieces, cramming them inside themselves, 
and by that summary process, growing fat : the vege- 



286 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

tarian, the whale, perhaps the tree, not less than the 
lion of the desert ; for the vegetarian is only the eater 
of the dumb. 

Meanwhile our rotatory island loaded with predatory 
life, and more drenched with blood, both animal and 
vegetable, than ever mutinied ship, scuds through space 
with unimaginable speed, and turns alternate cheeks to 
the reverberation of a blazing world, ninety million 
miles away. 

What a monstrous spectre is this man, the disease 
of the agglutinated dust, lifting alternate feet or lying 
drugged with slumber ; killing, feeding, growing, bring- 
ing forth small copies of himself ; grown upon with hair 
like grass, fitted with eyes that move and glitter in his 
face; a thing to set children screaming; — and yet 
looked at nearlier, known as his fellows know him, 
how surprising are his attributes ! Poor soul, here for 
so little, cast among so many hardships, filled with de- 
sires so incommensurate and so inconsistent, savagely 
surrounded, savagely descended, irremediably con- 
demned to prey upon his fellow lives : who should have 
blamed him had he been of a piece with his destiny 
and a being merely barbarous? And we look and be- 
hold him instead filled with imperfect virtues : infinitely 
childish, often admirably valiant, often touchingly kind ; 
sitting down, amidst his momentary life, to debate of 
right and wrong and the attributes of the deity ; rising 
up to do battle for an egg or die for an idea ; singling 
out his friends and his mate with cordial afifection ; 
bringing forth in pain, rearing with long-sufifering solic- 
itude, his young. To touch the heart of his mystery, 
we find in him one thought, strange to the point of 



PULVIS ET UMBRA 287 

lunacy : the thought of duty ; the thought of something 
owing to himself, to his neighbor, to his God : an ideal 
of decency, to which he would rise if it were possible; 
a limit of shame, below which, if it be possible, he 
will not stoop. The design in most men is one of 
conformity; here and there, in picked natures, it tran- 
scends itself and soars on the other side, arming 
martyrs with independence ; but in all, in their degrees, 
it is a bosom thought : — Not in man alone, for we 
trace it in dogs and cats whom we know fairly well, 
and doubtless some similar point of honor sways the 
elephant, the oyster, and the louse, of w^hom we know 
so little : — But in man, at least, it sways with so com- 
plete an empire that merely selfish things come second, 
even with the selfish : that appetites are starved, fears 
are conquered, pains supported ; that almost the dullest 
shrinks from the reproof of a glance, although it were 
a child's; and all but the most cowardly stand amid 
the risks of war; and the more noble, having strongly 
conceived an act as due to their ideal, affront and 
embrace death. Strange enough if, with their singular 
origin and perverted practice, they think they are to 
be rewarded in some future life: stranger still, if they 
are persuaded of the contrary, and think this blow, 
which they solicit, will strike them senseless for eter- 
nity. I shall be reminded what a tragedy of mis- 
conception and misconduct man at large presents : of 
organized injustice, cowardly violence and treacherous 
crime; and of the damning imperfections of the best. 
They cannot be too darkly drawn. Man is indeed 
marked for failure in his efforts to do right. But 
where the best consistently miscarry, how tenfold more 
remarkable that all should continue to strive ; and surely 



288 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

we should find it both touching and inspiriting, that in 
a field from which success is banished, our race should 
not cease to labor. 

If the first view of this creature, stalking in his 
rotatory isle, be a thing to shake the courage of the 
stoutest, on this nearer sight, he startles us with an 
admiring wonder. It matters not where we look, 
under what climate we observe him, in what stage of 
society, in what depth of ignorance, burthened with 
what erroneous morality; by camp-fires in Assiniboia, 
the snow powdering his shoulders, the wind plucking 
his blanket, as he sits, passing the ceremonial calumet 
and uttering his grave opinions like a Roman senator ; 
in ships at sea, a man inured to hardship and vile plea- 
sures, his brightest hope a fiddle in a tavern and a 
bedizened trull who sells herself to rob him, and he 
for all that simple, innocent, cheerful, kindly like a 
child, constant to toil, brave to drown, for others; in 
the slums of cities, moving among indifferent millions 
to mechanical employments, without hope of change in 
the future, with scarce a pleasure in the present, and 
yet true to his virtues, honest up to his lights, kind to 
his neighbors, tempted perhaps in vain by the bright 
gin-palace, perhaps long-suffering with the drunken 
wife that ruins him; in India (a woman this time) 
kneeling with broken cries and streaming tears, as she 
drowns her child in the sacred river; in the brothel, 
the discard of society, living mainly on strong drink, 
fed with affronts, a fool, a thief, the comrade of 
thieves, and even here keeping the point of honor 
and the touch of pity, often repaying the world's scorn 
with service, often standing firm upon a scruple, and 
at a certain cost, rejecting riches : — everywhere some 



PULVIS ET UMBRA 289 

virtue cherished or affected, everywhere some decency 
of thought and carriage, everywhere the ensign of 
man's ineffectual goodness : — ah ! if I could show you 
this ! if I could show you these men and women, all 
the world over, in every stage of history, under every 
abuse of error, under every circumstance of failure, 
without hope, without help, without thanks, still ob- 
scurely fighting the lost fight of virtue, still clinging, 
in the brothel or on the scaffold, to some rag of 
honor, the poor jewel of their souls! They may seek 
to escape, and yet they cannot ; it is not alone 
their privilege and glory, but their doom ; they 
are condemned to some nobility ; all their lives long, 
the desire of good is at their heels, the implacable 
hunter. 

Of all earth's meteors, here at least is the most 
strange and consoling: that this ennobled lemur, this 
hair-crowned bubble of the dust, this inheritor of a 
few years and sorrows, should yet deny himself his 
rare delights, and add to his frequent pains, and live 
for an ideal, however misconceived. Nor can we stop 
with man. A new doctrine, received with screams a 
little while ago by canting moralists, and still not prop- 
erly worked into the body of our thoughts, lights us a 
step farther into the heart of this rough but noble 
universe. For nowadays the pride of man denies in 
vain his kinship with the original dust. He stands no 
longer like a thing apart. Close at his heels we see the 
dog, prince of another genus: and in him too, we see 
dumbly testified the same cultus of an unattainable 
ideal, the same constancy in failure. Does it stop with 
the dog? We look at our feet where the ground is 
blackened with the swarming ant : a creature so small, 



290 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

so far from us in the hierarchy of brutes, that we 
can scarce trace and scarce comprehend his doings; 
and here also, in his ordered poHties and rigorous 
justice, we see confessed the law of duty and the fact 
of individual sin. Does it stop, then, with the ant? 
Rather this desire of well-doing and this doom of 
frailty run through all the grades of life : rather is 
this earth, from the frosty top of Everest to the next 
margin of the internal fire, one stage of ineffectual 
virtues and one temple of pious tears and perseverance. 
The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together. 
It is the common and the god-like law of life. The 
browsers, the biters, the barkers, the hairy coats of 
field and forest, the squirrel in the oak, the thousand- 
footed creeper in the dust, as they share with us the 
gift of life, share with us the love of an ideal: strive 
like us — like us are tempted to grow weary of the 
struggle — to do well ; like us receive at times unmer- 
ited refreshment, visitings of support, returns of cour- 
age ; and are condemned like us to be crucified between 
that double law of the members and the will. Are they 
like us, I wonder, in the timid hope of some reward, 
some sugar with the drug? do they, too, stand aghast 
at unrewarded virtues, at the sufferings of those whom, 
in our partiality, we take to be just, and the prosperity 
of such as, in our blindness, we call wicked? It may 
be, and yet God knows what they should look for. 
Even while they look, even while they repent, the foot 
of man treads them by thousands in the dust, the yelp- 
ing hounds burst upon their trail, the bullet speeds, 
the knives are heating in the den of the vivisectionist ; 
or the dew falls, and the generation of a day is blotted 
out. For these are creatures, compared with whom 



PULVIS ET UMBRA 291 

our weakness is strength, our ignorance wisdom, our 
brief span eternity. 

And as we dwell, we living things, in our isle of 
terror and under the imminent hand of death, God 
forbid it should be man the erected, the reasoner, the 
wise in his own eyes — God forbid it should be man 
that wearies in well-doing, that despairs of unrewarded 
effort, or utters the language of complaint. Let it be 
enough for faith, that the whole creation groans in 
mortal frailty, strives with unconquerable constancy : 
Surely not all in vain. 



XXII 

Self-Reliance 

By Ralph Waldo Emerson ^ 

" Ne te quaesiveris extra." 

Cast the bantling on the rocks, 
Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat, 
Wintered with the hawk and fox, 
Power and speed be hands and feet. 

There is a time in every man's education when he 
arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance ; that 
imitation is suicide ; that he must take himself for bet- 
ter for worse as his portion ; that though the wide uni- 
verse is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can 
come to him but through his toil bestowed on that 

1 This essay was one of the First Series of Emerson's Essays, published 
in 1841: the text as here given includes Emerson's revisions of 1848 and 
1876; it is used with the kind permission of the Houghton Mifflin Com- 
pany, owners of the copyright. About half the essay has been omitted, 
but the parts which are given preserve the essential points. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882, the American essayist and lecturer, 
was one of the famous group of Concord philosophers and an eloquent 
exponent of the uncompromising idealism of the transcendental school. 
Emerson's work is a glorification of intuition and of individualism. He 
distrusted reasoning and argument and would have a man live, in all 
the deeper relations of life, by his own feelings and his own " inner 
light." He was a poet even when he wrote in prose, and the interest 
of this essay in connection with the other points of view represented in 
this collection lies precisely in the fact that it is a plea for the poetic 
and intuitional sides of man's mind which have their authority no less 
than reason. It is included here in the belief that in learning to adjust 
the claims of these two avenues to knowledge lies the beginning of wis- 
dom. — Editor. 

292 



SELF-RELIANCE 293 

plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power 
which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he 
knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know 
until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one 
character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and 
another none. This sculpture in the memory is not 
without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed 
where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that 
particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and 
are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us rep- 
resents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate 
and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but 
God will not have his work made manifest by cow- 
ards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his 
heart into his work and done his best ; but what he has 
said or done otherwise shall give him no peace. It is 
a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt 
his genius deserts him ; no muse befriends ; no inven- 
tion, no hope. 

Trust thyself : every heart vibrates to that iron 
string. Accept the place the divine providence has 
found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the 
connection of events. Great men have always done 
so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of 
their age, betraying their perception that the abso- 
lutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working 
through their hands, predominating in all their being. 
And we are now men, and must accept in the highest 
mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors 
and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards flee- 
ing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers and 
benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort and advanc- 
ing on Chaos and the Dark. 



294 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text in 
the face and behavior of children, babes, and even 
brutes! That divided and rebel mind, that distrust 
of a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed 
the strength and means opposed to our purpose, these 
have not. Their mind being whole, their eye is as yet 
unconquered, and when we look in their faces we are 
disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody; all con- 
form to it ; so that one babe commonly makes four or 
five out of the adults who prattle and play to it. So 
God has armed youth and puberty and manhood no 
less with its own piquancy and charm, and made it 
enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, 
if it will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has no 
force, because he cannot speak to you and me. Hark ! 
in the next room his voice is sufficiently clear and em- 
phatic. It seems he knows how to speak to his con- 
temporaries. Bashful or bold then, he will know how 
to make us seniors very unnecessary. 

The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, 
and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught 
to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human na- 
ture. A boy is in the parlor what the pit is in the play- 
house; independent, irresponsible, looking out from 
his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries 
and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, sum- 
mary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, elo- 
quent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about 
consequences, about interests ; he gives an independ- 
ent, genuine verdict. You must court him; he does 
not court you. But the man is as it were clapped into 
jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted 
or spoken with eclat he is a committed person, watched 



SELF-RELIANCE 295 

by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose af- 
fections must now enter into his account. There is no 
Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass again into his 
neutrality ! Who can thus avoid all pledges and, hav- 
ing observed, observe again from the same unaffected, 
unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted innocence, — must 
always be formidable. He would utter opinions on all 
passing affairs, which being seen to be not private but 
necessary, would sink like darts into the ear of men 
and put them in fear. 

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but 
they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the 
world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against 
the manhood of every one of its members. Society is 
a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, 
for the better securing of his bread to each share- 
holder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. 
The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance 
is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but 
names and customs. 

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our 
consistency ; a reverence for our past act or word be- 
cause the eyes of others have no other data for com- 
puting our orbit than our past acts, and we are loth to 
disappoint them. 

But why should you keep your head over your shoul- 
der? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, 
lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or 
that public place ? Suppose you should contradict your- 
self ; what then ? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never 
to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of 
pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into 



296 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. 
In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the 
Deity, yet v^hen the devout motions of the soul come, 
yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe 
God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Jo- 
seph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee. 

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, 
adored by little statesmen and philosophers and di- 
vines. With consistency a great soul has simply noth- 
ing to do. He may as well concern himself with his 
shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in 
hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow 
thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every 
thing you said to-day. — ' Ah, so you shall be sure to 
be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad then to be misunder- 
stood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, 
and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, 
and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever 
took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. 

I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the 
sallies of his will are rounded in by the law of his being, 
as the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh are insig- 
nificant in the curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter 
how you gauge and try him. A character is like an 
acrostic or Alexandrian stanza ; — read it forward, 
backward, or across, it still spells the same thing. In 
this pleasing contrite wood-life which God allows me, 
let me record day by day my honest thought without 
prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be 
found symmetrical, though I mean it not and see it 
not. My book should smell of pines and resound with 
the hum of insects. The swallow over my window 
should interweave that thread or straw he carries in 



SELF-RELIANCE 297 

his bill into my web also. We pass for what we are. 
Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that 
they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt 
actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath 
every moment. 

Let a man then know his worth, and keep things 
under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up 
and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or 
an interloper in the world which exists for him. But 
the man in the street, finding no worth in himself 
which corresponds to the force which built a tower or 
sculptured a marble god, feels poor when he looks on 
these. To him a palace, a statue, or a costly book have 
an alien and forbidding air, much like a gay equipage, 
and seem to say like that, ' Who are you, Sir? ' Yet 
they all are his, suitors for his notice, petitioners to his 
faculties that they will come out and take possession. 
The picture waits for my verdict ; it is not to command 
me, but I am to settle its claims to praise. That popu- 
lar fable of the sot who was picked up dead-drunk in 
the street, carried to the duke's house, washed and 
dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his waking, 
treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, 
and assured that he had been insane, owes its popu- 
larity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the state of 
man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and 
then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself 
a true prince. 

The magnetism which all original action exerts is 
explained when we inquire the reason of self -trust. 
Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on 



298 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

which a universal reHance may be grounded? What 
is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, 
without parallax, without calculable elements, which 
shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure ac- 
tions, if the least mark of independence appear? The 
inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of 
genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity 
or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intu- 
ition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that 
deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot 
go, all things find their common origin. For the sense 
of being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, 
in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from 
light, from time, from man, but one with them and 
proceeds obviously from the same source whence their 
life and being also proceed. We first share the life by 
which things exist and afterwards see them as appear- 
ances in nature and forget that we have shared their 
cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought. 
Here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth 
man wisdom and which cannot be denied without 
impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense in- 
telligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and 
organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when 
we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow 
a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, 
if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philos- 
ophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we 
can affirm. Every man discriminates between the vol- 
untary acts of his mind and his involuntary percep- 
tions, and knows that to his involuntary perceptions 
a perfect faith is due. He may err in the expression of 
them, but he knows that these things are so, like day 



SELF-RELIANCE 299 

and night, not to be disputed. My wilful actions and 
acquisitions are but roving ; — the idlest reverie, the 
faintest native emotion, command my curiosity and 
respect. Thoughtless people contradict as readily the 
statement of perceptions as of opinions, or rather much 
more readily ; for they do not distinguish between per- 
ception and notion. They fancy that I choose to see 
this or that thing. But perception is not whimsical, 
but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after 
me, and in course of time all mankind, — although it 
may chance that no one has seen it before me. For 
my perception of it is as much a fact as the sun. 

The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so 
pure that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. It 
must be that when God speaketh he should commu- 
nicate, not one thing, but all things ; should fill the 
world with his voice ; should scatter forth light, nature, 
time, souls, from the centre of the present thought; 
and new date and new create the whole. Whenever a 
mind is simple and receives a divine wisdom, old things 
pass away, — means, teachers, texts, temples fall ; it 
lives now, and absorbs past and future into the pres- 
ent hour. All things are made sacred by relation to 
it, — one as much as another. All things are dissolved 
to their centre by their cause, and in the universal 
miracle petty and particular miracles disappear. If 
therefore a man claims to know and speak of God and 
carries you backward to the phraseology of some old 
mouldered nation in another country, in another world, 
believe him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which 
is its fulness and completion ? Is the parent better than 
the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? 
Whence then this worship of the past? The centuries 



300 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

are conspirators against the sanity and authority of 
the soul. Time and space are but physiological colors 
which the eye makes, but the soul is light : where it is, 
is day ; where it was, is night ; and history is an im- 
pertinence and an injury if it be any thing more than 
a cheerful apologue or parable of my being and be- 
coming. 

Man is timid and apologetic ; he is no longer upright ; 
he dares not say ' I think,' ' I am,' but quotes some 
saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass 
or the blowing rose. These roses under my window 
make no reference to former roses or to better ones ; 
they are for what they are ; they exist with God to- 
day. There is no time to them. There is simply the 
rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. 
Before a leaf -bud has burst, its whole life acts ; in the 
full-blown flower there is no more ; in the leafless root 
there is no less. Its nature is satisfied and it satisfies 
nature in all moments alike. But man postpones or 
remembers ; he does not live in the present, but with 
reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches 
that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the 
future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too 
lives with nature in the present, above time. 

This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong 
intellects dare not yet hear God himself unless he speak 
the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jere- 
miah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price 
on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children 
who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and 
tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men of talents 
and character they chance to see, — painfully recol- 
lecting the exact words they spoke ; afterwards, when 



SELF-RELIANCE 301 

they come into the point of view which those had who 
uttered these sayings, they understand them and are 
wiUing to let the words go ; for at any time they can 
use words as good when occasion comes. If we Hve 
truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong 
man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. 
When we have new perception, we shall gladly disbur- 
den the memory of its hoarded treasures as old rub- 
bish. When a man lives with God, his voice shall be 
as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of 
the corn. 

And now at last the highest truth on this subject 
remains unsaid ; probably cannot be said ; for all that 
we say is the far-off remembering of the intuition. That 
thought by what I can now nearest approach to say 
it, is this. When good is near you, when you have life 
in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way ; 
you shall not discern the footprints of any other; 
you shall not see the face of man ; you shall not hear 
any name ; — the way, the thought, the good, shall be 
wholly strange and new. It shall exclude example and 
experience. You take the way from man, not to man. 
All persons that ever existed are its forgotten ministers. 
Fear and hope are alike beneath it. There is some- 
what low even in hope. In the hour of vision there is 
nothing that can be called gratitude, nor properly joy. 
The soul raised over passion beholds identity and eter- 
nal causation, perceives the self-existence of Truth 
and Right, and calms itself with knowing that all things 
go well. Vast spaces of nature, the Atlantic Ocean, 
the South Sea ; long intervals of time, years, centuries, 
are of no account. This which I think and feel under- 
lay every former state of life and circumstances, as it 



302 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

does underlie my present, and what is called life and 
what is called death. 

Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases 
in the instant of repose ; it resides in the moment of 
transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting 
of the gulf, in the darting to an aim. This one fact the 
world hates; that the soul becomes; for that forever 
degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all repu- 
tation to a shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, 
shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside. Why then do 
we prate of self-reliance?. Inasmuch as the soul is pre- 
sent there will be power not confident but agent. To 
talk of reliance is a poor external way of speaking. 
Speak rather of that which relies because it works and 
is. Who has more obedience than I masters me, though 
he should not raise his finger. Round him I must re- 
volve by the gravitation of spirits. We fancy it rhet- 
oric when we speak of eminent virtue. We do not yet 
see that virtue is Height, and that a man or a company 
of men, plastic and permeable to principles, by the 
law of nature must overpower and ride all cities, na- 
tions, kings, rich men, poets, who are not. 

This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach 
on this, as on every topic, the resolution of all into the 
ever-blessed One. Self-existence is the attribute of 
the Supreme Cause, and it constitutes the measure of 
good by the degree in which it enters into all lower 
forms. All things real are so by so much virtue as they 
contain. Commerce, husbandry, hunting, whaling, 
war, eloquence, personal weight, are somewhat, and 
engage my respect as examples of its presence and im- 
pure action. I see the same law working in nature 
for conservation and growth. Power is, in nature, the 



SELF-RELIANCE 303 

essential measure of right. Nature suffers nothing to 
remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. The 
genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, 
the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, 
the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are 
demonstrations of the self-sufficing and therefore self- 
relying soul. 

Thus all concentrates : let us not rove ; let us sit at 
home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the 
intruding rabble of men and books and institutions 
by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid the 
invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is 
here within. Let our simplicity judge them, and our 
docility to our own law demonstrate the poverty of 
nature and fortune beside our native riches. 

But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe 
of man, nor is his genius admonished to stay at home 
to put itself in communication with the internal ocean, 
but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of 
other men. We must go alone. I like the silent church 
before the service begins, better than any preaching. 
How far off, how cool, how chaste the persons look, 
begirt each one with a precinct or sanctuary ! So let 
us always sit. Why should we assume the faults of our 
friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit 
around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood ? 
All men have my blood and I have all men's. Not for 
that will I adopt their petulance or folly, even to the 
extent of being ashamed of it. But your isolation must 
not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be eleva- 
tion. At times the whole world seems to be in con- 
spiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. 
Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all 



304 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

knock at once at thy closet door and say, — ' Come out 
unto us.' But keep thy state ; come not into their con- 
fusion. The power men possess to annoy me I give 
them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me 
but through my act. " What we love that we have, but 
by desire we bereave ourselves of the love." 

If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedi- 
ence and faith, let us at least resist our temptations; 
let us enter into the state of war and wake Thor and 
Woden, courage and constancy, in our Saxon breasts. 
This is to be done in our smooth times by speaking 
the truth. Check this lying hospitality and lying affec- 
tion. Live no longer to the expectation of these de- 
ceived and deceiving people with whom we converse. 
Say to them, ' O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, 

friend, I have lived with you after appearances 
hitherto. Henceforward I am the truth's. Be it known 
unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than 
the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximi- 
ties. I shall endeavor to nourish my parents, to support 
my family, to be the chaste husband of one wife, — 
but these relations I must fill after a new and unpre- 
cedented way. I appeal from your customs. I must 
be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, 
or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be 
the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve 
that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. 

1 will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do 
strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly re- 
joices me and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I 
will love you ; if you are not, I will not hurt you and 
myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but 
not in the same truth with me, cleave to your com- 



SELF-RELIANCE 305 

panions ; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly but 
humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, 
and all men's, however long we have dwelt in lies, to 
live in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day? You 
will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well 
as mine, and if we follow the truth it will bring us out 
safe at last.' — But so may you give these friends pain. 
Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to 
save their sensibility. Besides, all persons have their 
moments of reason, when they look out into the region 
of absolute truth; then will they justify me and do the 
same thing. 

The populace think that your rejection of popular 
standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere 
antinomianism ; and the bold sensualist will use the 
name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of 
consciousness abides. There are two confessionals, in 
one or the other of which we must be shriven. You 
may fulfil your round of duties by clearing yourself in 
the direct or in the reflex way. Consider whether you 
have satisfied your relations to father, mother, cousin, 
neighbor, town, cat and dog — whether any of these 
can upbraid you. But I may also neglect this reflex 
standard and absolve me to myself. I have my own 
stern claims and perfect circle. It denies the name of 
duty to many offices that are called duties. But if I 
can discharge its debts it enables me to dispense with 
the popular code. If any one imagines that this law 
is lax, let him keep its commandment one day. 

And truly it demands something godlike in him who 
has cast off the common motives of humanity and has 
ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be 
his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may 



3o6 ■ RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, 
that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron 
necessity is to others ! 

If any man consider the present aspects of what is 
called by distinction society, he will see the need of 
these ethics. The sinew and heart of man seem to be 
drawn out, and we are become timorous, desponding 
whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, 
afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age 
yields no great and perfect persons. We want men 
and women who shall renovate life and our social state, 
but we see that most natures are insolvent, cannot 
satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out of all 
proportion to their practical force and do lean and 
beg day and night continually. Our housekeeping is 
mendicant, our arts, our occupations, our marriages, 
our religion we have not chosen, but society has chosen 
for us. We are parlor soldiers. We shun the rugged 
battle of fate, where strength is bom. 

If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises 
they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men 
say he is ruined. If the finest genius studies at one of 
our colleges and is not installed in an office within one 
year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or 
New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that 
he is right in being disheartened and in complaining 
the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire 
or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who 
teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, 
edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, 
and so forth, in successive years, and always like a cat 
falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. 
He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in 



SELF-RELIANCE 307 

not ' studying a profession,' for he does not postpone 
his Hfe, but lives already. He has not one chance, but 
a hundred chances. Let a Stoic open the resources of 
man and tell men they are not leaning willows, but 
can and must detach themselves ; that with the exercise 
of self-trust, new powers shall appear; that a man is 
the word made flesh, born to shed healing to the na- 
tions ; that he should be ashamed of our compassion, 
and that the moment he acts from himself, tossing the 
laws, the books, idolatries and customs out of the win- 
dow, we pity him no more but thank and revere him ; 
— and that teacher shall restore the life of man to 
splendor and make his name dear to all history. 



XXIII 

Plugson of Undershot 

By Thomas Carlyle ^ 

One thing I do know : Never, on this Earth, was the 
relation of man to man long carried on by Cash- 
payment alone. If, at any time, a philosophy of 
Laissez-faire, Competition and Supply-and-demand, 
start up as the exponent of human relations, except that 
it will soon end. 

Such philosophies will arise : for man's philosophies 
are usually the ' supplement of his practice ; ' some 
ornamental Logic-varnish, some outer skin of Articu- 
late Intelligence, with which he strives to render his 
dumb Instinctive Doings presentable when they are 
done. Such philosophies will arise ; be preached as 
Mammon-Gospels, the ultimate Evangel of the World ; 

1 This essay and the two following are taken from Carlyle's Past and 
Present, 1843, a discussion of the social and industrial troubles of Car- 
lyle's day. The difficulties Carlyle is wrestling with have not yet been 
solved: they constitute, in all main essentials, the problem of industry 
at present, and are matters of immediate practical importance to the 
engineer. 

Thomas Carlyle, 1795-1881, was one of the greatest of the English men 
of letters of the nineteenth century. He was so little of a time-server 
and he set himself so resolutely against the materialism and utilitarianism 
of his day, that he had a hard fight to win recognition as a writer. His 
character, at once irritable, pugnacious, and idealistic, is well reflected in 
his style. The student who wishes to make further study of his work 
should begin with Heroes and Hero-Worship or Sartor Resartns and then 
Past and Present and the French Resolution. — Editor. 

308 



PLUGS ON OF UNDERSHOT 309 

be believed, with what is called belief, with much super- 
ficial bluster, and a kind of shallow satisfaction real in 
its way : — but they are ominous gospels ! They are 
the sure, and even swift, forerunner of great changes. 
Expect that the old System of Society is done, is dying 
and fallen into dotage, when it begins to rave in that 
fashion. Most Systems that I have watched the death 
of, for the last three thousand years, have gone just so. 
The Ideal, the True and Noble that was in them having 
faded out, and nothing now remaining but naked Ego- 
ism, vulturous Greediness, they cannot live ; they are 
bound and inexorably ordained by the oldest Destinies, 
Mothers of the Universe, to die. Curious enough : 
they thereupon, as I have pretty generally noticed, de- 
vise some light comfortable kind of ' wine-and-walnuts 
philosophy ' for themselves, this of Supply-and-demand 
or another; and keep saying, during hours of mastica- 
tion and rumination, which they call hours of medita- 
tion : " Soul, take thy ease ; it is all well that thou art 
a vulture-soul ; " — and pangs of dissolution come upon 
them, oftenest before they are aware ! 

Cash-payment never was, or could except for a few 
years be, the union-bond of man to man. Cash never 
yet paid one man fully his deserts to another ; nor could 
it, nor can it, now or henceforth to the end of the world. 
I invite his Grace of Castle-Rackrent to reflect on this; 
— does he think that a Land Aristocracy when it be- 
comes a Land Auctioneership can have long to live? 
Or that Sliding-scales will increase the vital stamina 
of it? The indomitable Plugson too, of the respected 
Firm of Plugson, Hunks and Company, in St. Dolly 
Undershot, is invited to reflect on this ; for to him also 
it will be new, perhaps even newer. Book-keeping by 



310 THOMAS CARLYLE 

double entry is admirable, and records several things in 
an exact manner. But the Mother-Destinies also keep 
their Tablets ; in Heaven's Chancery also there goes on 
a recording ; and things, as my Moslem friends say, are 
' written on the iron leaf.' 

Your Grace and Plugson, it is like, go to Church 
occasionally: did you never in vacant moments, with 
perhaps a dull parson droning to you, glance into your 
New Testament, and the cash-account stated four times 
over, by a kind of quadruple entry, — in the Four Gos- 
pels there? I consider that a cash-account, and bal- 
ance-statement of work done and wages paid, worth 
attending to. Precisely such, though on a smaller 
scale, go on at all moments under this Sun ; and the 
statement and balance of them in the Plugson Ledgers 
and on the Tablets of Heaven's Chancery are discrep- 
ant exceedingly ; — which ought really to teach, and to 
have long since taught, an indomitable common-sense 
Plugson of Undershot, much more an unattackable un- 
common-sense Grace of Rackrent, a thing or two ! — 
In brief, we shall have to dismiss the Cash-Gospel rig- 
orously into its own place : we shall have to know, on 
the threshold, that either there is some infinitely deeper 
Gospel, subsidiary, explanatory and daily and hourly 
corrective, to the Cash one ; or else that the Cash one 
itself and all others are fast travelling! 

For all human things do require to have an Ideal in 
them; to have some Soul in them, as we said, were it 
only to keep the Body unputrified. And wonderful it 
is to see how the Ideal or Soul, place it in what ugliest 
Body you may, will irradiate said Body with its own 
nobleness; will gradually, incessantly, mould, modify, 



PLUGSON OF UNDERSHOT 311 

new-form or reform said ugliest Body, and make it at 
last beautiful, and to a certain degree divine ! — Oh, if 
you could dethrone that Brute-god Mammon, and put a 
Spirit-god in his place ! One way or other, he must and 
will have to be dethroned. 

Fighting, for example, as I often say to myself, 
Fighting with steel murder-tools is surely a much uglier 
operation than Working, take it how you will. Yet 
even of Fighting, in religious Abbot Samson's days, 
see what a Feudalism there had grown, — a * glorious 
Chivalry,' much besung down to the present day. Was 
not that one of the ' impossiblest ' things ? Under the 
sky is no uglier spectacle than two men with clenched 
teeth, and hell-fire eyes, hacking one another's flesh, 
converting precious living bodies, and priceless living 
souls, into nameless masses of putrescence, useful only 
for turnip-manure. How did a Chivalry ever come out 
of that ; how anything that was not hideous, scandalous, 
infernal? It will be a question worth considering by 
and by. 

I remark, for the present, only two things : first, that 
the Fighting itself was not, as we rashly suppose it, a 
Fighting without cause, but more or less with cause. 
Man is created to fight ; he is perhaps best of all defin- 
able as a born soldier ; his life ' a battle and a march,' 
under the right General. It is forever indispensable 
for a man to fight : now with Necessity, with Barren- 
ness, Scarcity, with Puddles, Bogs, tangled Forests, un- 
kempt Cotton ; — now also with the hallucinations of 
his poor fellow Men. Hallucinatory visions rise in the 
head of my poor fellow man ; make him claim over me 
rights which are not his. All fighting, as we noticed 
long ago, is the dusty conflict of strengths, each think- 



312 THOMAS CARLYLE 

ing itself the strongest, or, in other words, the justest ; 
— of Mights which do in the long-run, and forever will 
in this just Universe in the long-run, mean Rights. In 
conflict the perishable part of them, beaten sufficiently, 
flies off into dust : this process ended, appears the 
imperishable, the true and exact. 

And now let us remark a second thing : how, in these 
baleful operations, a noble devout-hearted Chevalier 
will comport himself, and an ignoble godless Bucanier 
and Chactaw Indian. Victory is the aim of each. But 
deep in the heart of the noble man it lies forever legible, 
that as an Invisible Just God made him, so will and 
must God's Justice and this only, were it never so in- 
visible, ultimately prosper in all controversies and en- 
terprises and battles whatsoever. What an Influence ; 
ever-present, — like a Soul in the -rudest Caliban of a 
body ; like a ray of Heaven, and illuminative creative 
Fiat-Lux, in the wastest terrestrial Chaos ! Blessed 
divine Influence, traceable even in the horror of Battle- 
fields and garments rolled in blood : how it ennobles 
even the Battlefield ; and, in place of a Chactaw Massa- 
cre, makes it a Field of Honor! A Battlefield too is 
great. Considered well, it is a kind of Quintessence 
of Labor ; Labor distilled into its utmost concentration ; 
the significance of years of it compressed into an hour. 
Here too thou shalt be strong, and not in muscle only, 
if thou wouldst prevail. Here too thou shalt be strong 
of heart, noble of soul; thou shalt dread no pain or 
death, thou shalt not love ease or life; in rage, thou 
shalt remember mercy, justice; — thou shalt be a 
Knight and not a Chactaw, if thou wouldst prevail! 
It is the rule of all battles, against hallucinating fellow 
Men, against unkempt Cotton, or whatsoever battles 



PLUGSON OF UNDERSHOT 313 

they may be, which a man in this world has to fight. 

Howel Davies dyes the West-Indian Seas with blood, 
piles his decks with plunder ; approves himself the 
expertest Seaman, the daringest Seafighter : but he 
gains no lasting victory, lasting victory is not possible 
for him. Not, had he fleets larger than the combined 
British Navy all united with him in bucaniering. He, 
once for all, cannot prosper in his duel. He strikes 
down his man : yes ; but his man, or his man's repre- 
sentative, has no notion to lie struck down ; neither, 
though slain ten times, will he keep so lying ; — nor has 
the Universe any notion to keep him so lying ! On the 
contrary, the Universe and he have, at all moments, all 
manner of motives to start up again, and desperately 
fight again. Your Napoleon is flung out, at last, to St. 
Helena ; the latter end of him sternly compensating 
the beginning. The Bucanier strikes down a man, 
a hundred or a million men: but what profits it? He 
has one enemy never to be struck down ; nay two 
enemies: Mankind and the Maker of Men. On the 
great scale or on the small, in fighting of men or fight- 
ing of difficulties, I will not embark my venture with 
Howel Davies : it is not the Bucanier, it is the Hero 
only that can gain victory, that can do more than seem 
to succeed. These things will deserve meditating ; 
for they apply to all battle and soldiership, all struggle 
and effort whatsoever in this Fight of Life. It is a 
poor Gospel, Cash-Gospel or whatever name it have, 
that does not, with clear tone, uncontradictable, carry- 
ing conviction to all hearts, forever keep men in mind 
of these things. 

Unhappily, my indomitable friend Plugson of Un- 
dershot has, in a great degree, forgotten them; — as, 



314 THOMAS CARLYLE 

alas, all the world has; as, alas, our very Dukes and 
Soul-Overseers have, whose special trade it was to 
remember them ! Hence these tears. — Plugson, who 
has indomitably spun Cotton merely to gain thousands 
of pounds, I have to call as yet a Bucanier and Chac- 
taw ; till there come something better, still more in- 
domitable from him. His hundred Thousand-pound 
Notes, if there be nothing other, are to me but as the 
hundred Scalps in a Chactaw wigwam. The blind 
Plugson : he was a Captain of Industry, born member 
of the Ultimate genuine Aristocracy of this Universe, 
could he have known it! These thousand men that 
span and toiled round him, they were a regiment whom 
he had enlisted, man by man ; to make war on a very 
genuine enemy : Bareness of back, and disobedient 
Cotton-fibre, which will not, unless forced to it, consent 
to cover bare backs. Here is a most genuine enemy ; 
over whom all creatures will wish him victory. He 
enlisted his thousand men : said to them, " Come, 
brothers, let us have a dash at Cotton ! " They follow 
with cheerful shout ; they gain such a victory over 
Cotton as the Earth has to admire and clap hands at: 
but, alas, it is yet only of the Bucanier or Chactaw 
sort, — as good as no victory ! Foolish Plugson of St. 
Dolly Undershot: does he hope to become illustrious 
by hanging up the scalps in his wigwam, the hundred 
thousands at his banker's, and saying. Behold my 
scalps? Why, Plugson, even thy own host is all in 
mutiny : Cotton is conquered ; but the * bare backs ' 
— are worse covered than ever ! Indomitable Plug- 
son, thou must cease to be a Chactaw ; thou and others ; 
thou thyself, if no other! 
Did William the Norman Bastard, or any of his 



PLUGS ON OF UNDERSHOT 315 

Taillefers, Ironcutters, manage so? Ironcutter, at the 
end of the campaign, did not turn-off his thousand 
fighters, but said to them : "Noble fighters, this is the 
land we have gained ; be I Lord in it, — what we will 
call Law-ward, maintainer and keeper of Heaven's 
Lazi's: be I Lazv-tvard, or in brief orthoepy Lord in it, 
and be ye Loyal Men around me in it ; and we will 
stand by one another, as soldiers round a captain, for 
again we shall have need of one another ! " Plugson, 
bucanier-like, says to them : " Noble spinners, this is 
the Hundred Thousand we have gained, wherein I 
mean to dwell and plant vineyards ; the hundred thou- 
sand is mine, the three and sixpence daily was yours : 
adieu, noble spinners ; drink my health with this groat 
each, which I give you over and above ! " The entirely 
unjust Captain of Industry, say I; not Chevalier, but 
Bucanier ! ' Commercial Law ' does indeed acquit him ; 
asks, with wide eyes. What else? So too Howel Da- 
vies asks. Was it not according to the strictest Bucanier 
Custom? Did I depart in any jot or tittle from the 
Laws of the Bucaniers? 

After all, money, as they say, is miraculous. Plug- 
son wanted victory ; as Chevaliers and Bucaniers, and 
all men alike do. He found money recognised, by the 
whole world with one assent, as the true symbol, exact 
equivalent and synonym of victory ; — and here we 
have him, a grimbrowed, indomitable Bucanier, com- 
ing home to us with a ' victory,' which the whole world 
is ceasing to clap hands at ! The whole world, taught 
somewhat impressively, is beginning to recognise that 
such victory is but half a victory; and that now, if 
it please the Powers, we must — have the other half ! 

Money is miraculous. What miraculous facilities 



3i6 THOMAS CARLYLE 

has it yielded, will it yield us; but also what never- 
imagined confusions, obscurations has it brought in; 
down almost to total extinction of the moral-sense in 
large masses of mankind ! * Protection of property,' 
of what is ' mine/ means with most men protection of 
money, — the thing which, had I a thousand padlocks 
over it, is least of all mine; is, in a manner, scarcely 
worth calling mine ! The symbol shall be held sacred, 
defended everywhere with tipstaves, ropes and gibbets ; 
the thing signified shall be composedly cast to the 
dogs. A human being who has worked with human 
beings clears all scores with them, cuts himself with 
triumphant completeness forever loose from them, by 
paying down certain shillings and pounds. Was it not 
the wages I promised you? There they are, to the 
last sixpence, — according to the Laws of the Buca- 
niers ! — Yes, indeed ; — and, at such times, it becomes 
imperatively necessary to ask all persons, bucaniers and 
others. Whether these same respectable Laws of the 
Bucaniers are written on God's eternal Heavens at all, 
on the inner Heart of Man at all ; or on the respectable 
Bucanier Logbook merely, for the convenience of 
bucaniering merely ? What a question ; — whereat 
Westminster Hall shudders to its driest parchment; 
and on the dead wigs each particular horsehair stands 
on end ! 

The Laws of Laissez-faire, O Westminster, the 
laws of industrial Captain and industrial Soldier, how 
much more of idle Captain and industrial Soldier, will 
need to be remodelled, and modified, and rectified in a 
hundred and a hundred ways, — and not in the 
Sliding-scale direction, but in the totally opposite one ! 
With two million industrial Soldiers already sitting in 



PLUGSON OF UNDERSHOT 317 

Bastilles, and five million pining on potatoes, methinks 
Westminster cannot begin too soon ! — A man has 
other obligations laid on him, in God's Universe, than 
the payment of cash : these also Westminster, if it 
will continue to exist and have board-wages, must con- 
trive to take some charge of : — by Westminster or 
by another, they must and will be taken charge of ; be, 
with whatever difficulty, got articulated, got enforced, 
and to a certain approximate extent put in practice. 
And, as I say, it cannot be too soon ! For Mammon- 
ism, left to itself, has become Midas-eared; and with 
all its gold mountains, sits starving for want of bread : 
and Dilettantism with its partridge-nets, in this ex- 
tremely earnest Universe of ours, is playing somewhat 
too high a game. ' A man by the very look of him 
promises so much:' yes; and by the rent-roll of him 
does he promise nothing? — 

Alas, what a business will this be, which our Con- 
tinental friends, groping this long while somewhat 
absurdly about it and about it, call ' Organisation of 
Labor ; ' — which must be taken out of the hands of 
absurd windy persons, and put into the hands of wise, 
laborious, modest and valiant men, to begin with it 
straightway ; to proceed with it, and succeed in it more 
and more, if Europe, at any rate if England, is to con- 
tinue habitable much longer. Looking at the kind of 
most noble Corn-Law Dukes or Practical Duces we 
have, and also of right reverend Soul-Overseers, 
Christian Spiritual Duces ' on a minimum of four thou- 
sand five hundred,' one's hopes are a little chilled. 
Courage, nevertheless ; there are many brave men in 
England ! My indomitable Plugson, — nay is there 



3i8 THOMAS CARLYLE 

not even in thee some hope? Thou art hitherto a 
Bucanier, as it was written and prescribed for thee by 
an evil world : but in that grim brow, in that indom- 
itable heart which can conquer Cotton, do there not 
perhaps lie other ten-times nobler conquests? 



XXIV 

Captains of Industry 

By Thomas Carlyle ^ 

If I believed that Mammonism with its adjuncts was 
to continue henceforth the one serious principle of our 
existence, I should reckon it idle to solicit remedial 
measures from any Government, the disease being in- 
susceptible of remedy. Government can do much, but 
it can in no wise do all. Government, as the most con- 
spicuous object in Society, is called upon to give signal 
of what shall be done ; and, in many ways, to preside 
over, further, and command the doing of it. But the 
Government cannot do, by all its signaling and com- 
manding, what the Society is radically indisposed to do. 
In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol 
of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom ; we 
have to say. Like People like Government. — The main 
substance of this immense Problem of Organising 
Labor, and first of all of Managing the Working 
Classes, will, it is very clear, have to be solved by those 
who stand practically in the middle of it ; by those who 
themselves work and preside over work. Of all that 
can be enacted by any Parliament in regard to it, the 
germs must already He potentially extant in those two 
Classes, who are to obey such enactment. A Human 
Chaos in which there is no light, you vainly attempt 

1 See Note to Essay XXIII. 



320 THOMAS CARLYLE 

to irradiate by light shed on it : order never can arise 
there. 

But it is my firm conviction that the ' Hell of Eng- 
land ' w^ill cease to be that of ' not making money ; ' 
that we shall get a nobler Hell and a nobler Heaven ! 
I anticipate light in the Human Chaos, glimmering, 
shining more and more; under manifold true signals 
from without That light shall shine. Our deity no 
longer being Mammon, — O Heavens, each man will 
then say to himself : " Why such deadly haste to make 
money? I shall not go to Hell, even if I do not make 
money ! There is another Hell, I am told ! " Compe- 
tition, at railway-speed, in all branches of commerce 
and work will then abate : — good felt-hats for the 
head, in every sense, instead of seven- feet lath-and- 
plaster hats on wheels, will then be discoverable ! 
Bubble-periods, with their panics and commercial crises, 
will again become infrequent; steady modest industry 
will take the place of gambling speculation. To be a 
noble Master, among noble Workers, will again be the 
first ambition with some few ; to be a rich Master only 
the second. How the Inventive Genius of England, 
with the whirr of its bobbins and billy-rollers shoved 
somewhat into the backgrounds of the brain, will con- 
trive and devise, not cheaper produce exclusively, but 
fairer distribution of the produce at its present cheap- 
ness ! By degrees, we shall again have a Society with 
something of Heroism in it, something of Heaven's 
Blessing on it; we shall again have, as my German 
friend asserts, * instead of Mammon-Feudalism with 
unsold cotton-shirts and Preservation of the Game, 
noble just Industrialism and Government by the Wis- 
est ! ' 



CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY 321 

It is with the hope of awakening here and there a 
British man to know himself for a man and divine soul, 
that a few words of parting admonition, to all persons 
to whom the Heavenly Powers have lent power of any 
kind in this land, may now be addressed. And first to 
those same Master-Workers, Leaders of Industry; 
who stand nearest and in fact powerfulest, though not 
most prominent, being as yet in too many senses a Vir- 
tuality rather than an Actuality. 

The Leaders of Industry, if Industry is ever to be 
led, are virtually the Captains of the World ; if there 
be no nobleness in them, there will never be an Aris- 
tocracy more. But let the Captains of Industry con- 
sider : once again, are they born of other clay than the 
old Captains of Slaughter ; doomed forever to be no 
Chivalry, but a mere gold-plated Doggery, — what 
the French well named Canaille, ' Doggery ' with more 
or less gold carrion at its disposal? Captains of In- 
dustry are the true Fighters, henceforth recognisable as 
the only true ones : Fighters against Chaos, Necessity 
and the Devils and Jotuns ; and lead on Mankind in 
that great, and alone true, and universal warfare ; the 
stars in their courses fighting for them, and all Heaven 
and all Earth saying audibly, Well done ! Let the Cap- 
tains of Industry retire into their own hearts, and ask 
solemnly. If there is nothing but vulturous hunger, for 
fine wines, valet reputation and gilt carriages, discov- 
erable there? Of hearts made by the Almighty God I 
will not believe such a thing. Deep-hidden under 
wretchedest god- forgetting Cants, Epicurisms, Dead- 
Sea Apisms ; forgotten as under foulest fat Lethe mud 
and weeds, there is yet, in all hearts born into this 



322 THOMAS CARLYLE 

God's- World, a spark of the Godlike slumbering. 
Awake, O nightmare sleepers ; awake, arise, or be for- 
ever fallen ! This is not playhouse poetry ; it is sober 
fact. Our England, our world cannot live as it is. 
It will connect itself with a God again, or go down with 
nameless throes and fire-consummation to the Devils. 
Thou who feelest aught of such a Godlike stirring in 
thee, any faintest intimation of it as through heavy- 
laden dreams, follow it, I conjure thee. Arise, save 
thyself, be one of those that save thy country. 

Bucaniers, Chactaw Indians, whose supreme aim in 
fighting is that they may get the scalps, the money, that 
they may amass scalps and money : out of such came 
no Chivalry, and never will ! Out of such came only 
gore and wreck, infernal rage and misery ; desperation 
quenched in annihilation. Behold it, I bid thee, behold 
there, and consider ! What is it that thou have a hun- 
dred thousand-pound bills laid-up in thy strong-room, 
a hundred scalps hung-up in thy wigwam ? I value not 
them or thee. Thy scalps and thy thousand-pound 
bills are as yet nothing, if no nobleness from within 
irradiate them; if no Chivalry, in action, or in embryo 
ever struggling towards birth and action, be there. 

Love of men cannot be bought by cash-payment ; 
and without love men cannot endure to be together. 
You cannot lead a Fighting World without having 
it regimented, chivalried : the thing, in a day, becomes 
impossible ; all men in it, the highest at first, the very 
lowest at last, discern consciously, or by a noble in- 
stinct, this necessity. And can you any more continue 
to lead a Working World unregimented, anarchic? I 
answer, and the Heavens and Earth are now answer- 
ing, No ! The thing becomes not * in a day ' impos- 



CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY 323 

sible ; but in some two generations it does. Yes, when 
fathers and mothers, in Stockport hunger-cellars, be- 
gin to eat their children, and Irish widows have to 
prove their relationship by dying of typhus-fever; and 
amid Governing ' Corporations of the Best and Brav- 
est,' busy to preserve their game by ' bushing,' dark 
millions of God's human creatures start up in mad 
Chartisms, impracticable Sacred-Months, and Man- 
chester Insurrections; — and there is a virtual Indus- 
trial Aristocracy as yet only half-alive, spell-bound 
amid money-bags and ledgers ; and an actual Idle Aris- 
tocracy seemingly near dead in somnolent delusions, 
in trespasses and double-barrels ; ' sliding,' as on in- 
clined-planes, which every new year they soap with 
new Hansard's-jargon under God's sky, and so are 
' sliding,' ever faster, towards a ' scale ' and balance- 
scale whereon is written Thou art found Wanting: — : 
in such days, after a generation or two, I say, it does 
become, even to the low and simple, very palpably im- 
possible ! No Working World, any more than a Fight- 
ing World, can be led on without a noble Chivalry of 
W^ork, and laws and fixed rules which follow out of 
that, — far nobler than any Chivalry of Fighting was. 
As an anarchic multitude on mere Supply-and-demand, 
it is becoming inevitable that we dwindle in horrid 
suicidal convulsion and self-abrasion, frightful to the 
imagination, into Chactazv Workers. With wigwams 
and scalps, — with palaces and thousand-pound bills ; 
with savagery, depopulation, chaotic desolation ! Good 
Heavens, will not one French Revolution and Reign 
of Terror suffice us, but must there be two? There 
will be two if needed ; there will be twenty if needed ; 
there will be precisely as many as are needed. The 



324 THOMAS CARLYLE 

Laws of Nature will have themselves fulfilled. That 
is a thing certain to me. 

Your gallant battle-hosts and work-hosts, as the 
others did, will need to be made loyally yours; they 
must and will be regulated, methodically secured in 
their just share of conquest under you; — joined with 
you in veritable brotherhood, sonhood, by quite other 
and deeper ties than those of temporary day's wages ! 
How would mere red-coated regiments, to say nothing 
of chivalries, fight for you, if you could discharge them 
on the evening of the battle, on payment of the stipu- 
lated shillings, — and they discharge you on the morn- 
ing of it ! Chelsea Hospitals, pensions, promotions, 
rigorous lasting covenant on the one side and on the 
other, are indispensable even for a hired fighter. The 
Feudal Baron, much more, — how could he subsist 
with mere temporary mercenaries round him, at six- 
pence a day; ready to go over to the other side, if 
sevenpence were offered? He could not have sub- 
sisted ; — and his noble instinct saved him from the 
necessity of even trying ! The Feudal Baron had a 
Man's Soul in him ; to which anarchy, mutiny, and the 
other fruits of temporary mercenaries, were intoler- 
able: he had never been a Baron otherwise, but had 
continued a Chactaw and Bucanier. He felt it pre- 
cious, and at last it became habitual, and his fruitful 
enlarged existence included it as a necessity, to have 
men round him who in heart loved him ; whose life 
he watched over with rigor yet with love; who were 
prepared to give their life for him, if need came. It 
was beautiful; it was human! Man lives not other- 
wise, nor can live contented, anywhere or anywhen. 
Isolation is the sum-total of wretchedness to man. To 



CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY 325 

be cut off, to be left solitary : to have a world alien, 
not your world ; all a hostile camp for you ; not a home 
at all, of hearts and faces who are yours, whose you 
are! It is the frightfulest enchantment; too truly a 
work of the Evil One. To have neither superior, nor 
inferior, nor equal, united manlike to you. Without 
father, without child, without brother. Man knows 
no sadder destiny. ' How is each of us,' exclaims Jean 
Paul, ' so lonely in the wide bosom of the All ! ' En- 
cased each as in his transparent ' ice-palace ; ' our 
brother visible in his, making signals and gesticulations 
to us; — visible, but forever unattainable: on his 
bosom we shall never rest, nor he on ours. It was not 
a God that did this ; no ! 

Awake, ye noble Workers, warriors in the one true 
war : all this must be remedied. It is you who are 
already half-alive, whom I will welcome into life; 
whom I will conjure, in God's name, to shake off your 
enchanted sleep, and live wholly ! Cease to count 
scalps, gold-purses ; not in these lies your or our salva- 
tion. Even these, if you count only these, will not 
long be left. Let bucaniering be put far from you ; 
alter, speedily abrogate all laws of the bucaniers, if 
you would gain any victory that shall endure. Let 
God's justice, let pity, nobleness and manly valor, 
with more gold-purses or with fewer, testify them- 
selves in this your brief Life-transit to all the Eter- 
nities, the Gods and Silences. It is to you I call ; for 
ye are not dead, ye are already half-alive : there is in 
you a sleepless dauntless energy, the prime-matter of 
all nobleness in man. Honor to you in your kind. It 
is to you I call : ye know at least this, That the mandate 
of God to His creature man is : Work ! The future 



326 THOMAS CARLYLE 

Epic of the World rests not with those that are near 
dead, but with those that are aHve, and those that are 
coming into Hfe. 

Look around you. Your world-hosts are all in mu- 
tiny, in confusion, destitution; on the eve of fiery 
wreck and madness ! They will not march farther for 
you, on the sixpence a day and supply-and-demand 
principle : they will not ; nor ought they, nor can they. 
Ye shall reduce them to order, begin reducing them. 
To order, to just subordination ; noble loyalty in return 
for noble guidance. Their souls are driven nigh mad ; 
let yours be sane and ever saner. Not as a bewildered 
bewildering mob ; but as a firm regimented mass, with 
real captains over them, will these men march any 
more. All human interests, combined human endeav- 
ors, and social growths in this world, have, at a certain 
stage of their development, required organising: and 
Work, the grandest of human interests, does now re- 
quire it. 

God knows, the task will be hard : but no noble task 
was ever easy. This task will wear away your lives, 
and the lives of your sons and grandsons : but for what 
purpose, if not for tasks like this, were lives given to 
men? Ye shall cease to count your thousand-pound 
scalps, the noble of you shall cease ! Nay the very 
scalps, as I say, will not long be left if you count only 
these. Ye shall cease wholly to be barbarous vulturous 
Chactaws, and become noble European Nineteenth- 
Century Men. Ye shall know that Mammon, in never 
such gigs and flunky ' respectabilities,' is not the alone 
God ; that of himself he is but a Devil, and even a 
Brute-god. 

Difficult? Yes, it will be difficult. The short-fibre 



CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY 327 

cotton ; that too was difficult. The waste cotton-shrub, 
long useless, disobedient, as the thistle by the wayside, 
— have ye not conquered it; made it into beautiful 
bandana webs ; white woven shirts for men ; bright- 
tinted air-garments wherein flit goddesses? Ye have 
shivered mountains asunder, made the hard iron pliant 
to you as soft putty: the Forest-giants, Marsh-jotuns 
bear sheaves of golden grain ; ^gir the Sea-demon 
himself stretches his back for a sleek highway to you, 
and on Fire-horses and Wind-horses ye career. Ye are 
most strong. Thor red-bearded, with his blue sun-eyes, 
with his cheery heart and strong thunder-hammer, 
he and you have prevailed. Ye are most strong, 
ye Sons of the icy North, of the far East, — far march- 
ing from your rugged Eastern Wildernesses, hither- 
ward from the gray Dawn of Time ! Ye are Sons of 
the Jdtiin-\3.nd; the land of Difficulties Conquered. 
Difficult ? You must try this thing. Once try it with the 
understanding that it will and shall have to be done. 
Try it as ye try the paltrier thing, making of money ! 
I will bet on you once more, against all Jotuns, Tailor- 
gods, Double-barrelled Law-wards, and Denizens of 
Chaos whatsoever! 



XXV 

Permanence 

By Thomas Carlyle ^ 

Standing on the threshold, nay as yet outside the 
threshold, of a ' Chivalry of Labor,' and an immeasur- 
able Future which it is to fill with fruitfulness and 
verdant shade ; where so much has not yet come even 
to the rudimental state, and all speech of positive 
enactments were hazardous in those who know this 
business only by the eye, — let us here hint at simply 
one widest universal principle, as the basis from which 
all organisation hitherto has grown up among men, 
and all henceforth will have to grow: The principle of 
Permanent Contract instead of Temporary. 

Permanent not Temporary : — you do not hire the 
mere redcoated fighter by the day, but by the score 
of years! Permanence, persistence is the first condi- 
tion of all fruitfulness in the ways of men. The * ten- 
dency to persevere,' to persist in spite of hindrances, 
discouragements and ' impossibilities : ' it is this that 
in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the 
weak; the civihsed burgher from the nomadic savage, 
— the Species Man from the Genus Ape ! The No- 
mad has his very house set on wheels; the Nomad, 

1 See Note to Essay XXIII. 
328 



PERMANENCE 329 

and in a still higher degree the Ape, are all for ' lib- 
erty ; ' the privilege to flit continually is indispensable 
for them. Alas, in how many ways, does our humor, 
in this swift-rolling, self-abrading Time, show itself 
nomadic, apelike; mournful enough to him that looks 
on it with eyes ! This humor will have to abate ; it 
is the first element of all fertility in human things, 
that such * liberty ' of apes and nomads do by freewill 
or constraint abridge itself, give place to a better. The 
civilised man lives not in wheeled houses. He builds 
stone castles, plants lands, makes lifelong marriage- 
contracts ; — has long-dated hundred-fold possessions, 
not to be valued in the money-market ; has pedigrees, 
libraries, law-codes ; has memories and hopes, even for 
this Earth, that reach over thousands of years. Life- 
long marriage-contracts : how much preferable were 
year-long or month-long — to the nomad or ape ! 

Month-long contracts please me little, in any prov- 
ince where there can by possibility be found virtue 
enough for more. Month-long contracts do not an- 
swer well even with your house-servants; the liberty 
on both sides to change every month is growing very 
apehke, nomadic ; — and I hear philosophers predict 
that it will alter, or that strange results will follow : 
that wise men, pestered with nomads, with unattached 
ever-shifting spies and enemies rather than friends and 
servants, will gradually, weighing substance against 
semblance, with indignation, dismiss such, down almost 
to the very shoeblack, and say, " Begone ; I will serve 
myself rather, and have peace ! " Gurth was hired for 
life to Cedric, and Cedric to Gurth. O Anti-Slavery 
Convention, loud-sounding long-eared Exeter-Hall — 
But in thee too is a kind of instinct towards justice, 



330 THOMAS CARLYLE 

and I will complain of nothing. Only black Quashee 
over the seas being once sufficiently attended to, wilt 
thou not perhaps open thy dull sodden eyes to the 
' sixty-thousand valets in London itself who are yearly 
dismissed to the streets, to be what they can, when the 
season ends ; ' — or to the hunger-stricken, pallid, yel- 
/ow-colored ' Free Laborers ' in Lancashire, York- 
shire, Buckinghamshire, and all other shires ! These 
Yellow-colored, for the present, absorb all my sym- 
pathies : if I had a Twenty Millions, with Model- 
Farms and Niger Expeditions, it is to these that I 
would give it ! Quashee has already victuals, clothing ; 
Quashee is not dying of such despair as the yellow- 
colored pale man's. Quashee, it must be owned, is 
hitherto a kind of blockhead. The Haiti Duke of 
Marmalade, educated now for almost half a century, 
seems to have next to no sense in him. Why, in one 
of those Lancashire Weavers, dying of hunger, there 
is more thought and heart, a greater arithmetical 
amount of misery and desperation, than in whole gangs 
of Quashees. It must be owmed, thy eyes are of the 
sodden sort; and with thy emancipations, and thy 
twenty-millionings and long-eared clamorings, thou, 
like Robespierre with his paste-board Etre Supreme, 
threatenest to become a bore to us : Avec ton Etre Su- 
preme tu commences m'embcter! — 

In a Printed Sheet of the assiduous, much-abused, 
and truly useful Mr. Chadwick's, containing queries 
and responses from far and near as to this great ques- 
tion, ' What is the effect of education on working-men, 
in respect of their value as mere workers ? ' the present 
Editor, reading with satisfaction a decisive unanimous 



PERMANENCE 331 

verdict as to Education, reads with inexpressible in- 
terest this special remark, put in by way of marginal 
incidental note, from a practical manufacturing 
Quaker, whom, as he is anonymous, we will call Friend 
Prudence. Prudence keeps a thousand workmen ; has 
striven in all ways to attach them to him; has pro- 
vided conversational soirees; play-grounds, bands of 
music for the young ones ; went even ' the length of 
buying them a drum : ' all which has turned out to be 
an excellent investment. For a certain person, marked 
here by a black stroke, whom we shall name Blank, 
living over the way, — he also keeps somewhere about 
a thousand men; but has done none of these things for 
them, nor any other thing, except due payment of the 
wages by supply-and-demand. Blank's workers are 
perpetually getting into mutiny, into broils and coils : 
every six months, we suppose. Blank has a strike ; 
every one month, every day and every hour, they are 
fretting and obstructing the shortsighted Blank ; pilfer- 
ing from him, wasting and idling for him, omitting and 
committing for him. " I would not," says Friend 
Prudence, " exchange my workers for his zvith seven 
thousand pounds to hoot." ^ 

Right, O honorable Prudence ; thou art wholly in the 
right: Seven thousand pounds even as a matter of 
profit for this world, nay for the mere cash-market of 
this world ! And as a matter of profit not for this 
world only, but for the other world and all worlds, it 
outweighs the Bank of England ! — Can the sagacious 
reader descry here, as it were the outmost inconsider- 
able rock-ledge of a universal rock-foundation, deep 
once more as the Centre of the World, emerging so, in 

I Report on the Training of Pauper Children (1841), p. 18. 



332 THOMAS CARLYLE 

the experience of this good Quaker, through the Sty- 
gian mud-vortexes and general Mother of Dead Dogs, 
whereon, for the present, all swags and insecurely 
hovers, as if ready to be swallowed? 

Some Permanence of Contract is already almost 
possible; the principle of Permanence, year by year, 
better seen into and elaborated, may enlarge itself, 
expand gradually on every side into a system. This 
once secured, the basis of all good results were laid. 
Once permanent, you do not quarrel with the first 
difficulty on your path, and quit it in weak disgust; 
you reflect that it cannot be quitted, that it must be 
conquered, a wise arrangement fallen on with regard 
to it. Ye foolish Wedded Two, who have quarrelled, 
between whom the Evil Spirit has stirred-up transient 
strife and bitterness, so that ' incompatibility ' seems 
almost nigh, ye are nevertheless the Two who, by 
long habit, were it by nothing more, do best of all 
others suit each other: it is expedient for your own 
two foolish selves, to say nothing of the infants, pedi- 
grees and public in general, that ye agree again ; that 
ye put away the Evil Spirit, and wisely on both hands 
struggle for the guidance of a Good Spirit! 

The very horse that is permanent, how much kindlier 
do his rider and he work, than the temporary one, hired 
on any hack principle yet known ! I am for perma- 
nence in all things, at the earliest possible moment, 
and to the latest possible. Blessed is he that continueth 
where he is. Here let us rest, and lay-out seedfields ; 
here let us learn to dwell. Here, even here, the or- 
chards that we plant will yield us fruit ; the acorns will 
be wood and pleasant umbrage, if we wait. How much 



PERMANENCE 333 

grows everywhere, if we do but wait! Through the 
swamps we will shape causeways, force purifying 
drains ; we will learn to thread the rocky inaccessi- 
bilities ; and beaten tracks, worn smooth by mere trav- 
elling of human feet, will form themselves. Not a 
difficulty but can transfigure itself into a triumph ; not 
even a deformity but, if our own soul have imprinted 
worth on it, will grow dear to us. The sunny plains 
and deep indigo transparent skies of Italy are all in- 
different to the great sick heart of a Sir Walter Scott : 
on the back of the Apennines, in wild spring weather, 
the sight of bleak Scotch firs, and snow-spotted heath 
and desolation, brings tears into his eyes.^ 

O unwise mortals that forever change and shift, and 
say, Yonder, not Here ! Wealth richer than both the 
Indies Hes everywhere for man, if he will endure. Not 
his oaks only and his fruit-trees, his very heart roots 
itself wherever he will abide; — roots itself, draws 
nourishment from the deep fountains of Universal Be- 
ing! Vagrant Sam-Slicks, who rove over the Earth 
doing 'strokes of trade,' what wealth have they? 
Horseloads, shiploads of white or yellow metal : in 
very sooth, what are these? Slick rests nowhere, he 
is homeless. He can build stone or marble houses ; but 
to continue in them is denied him. The wealth of a 
man is the number of things which he loves and blesses, 
which he is loved and blessed by ! The herdsman in 
his poor clay shealing, where his very cow and dog 
are friends to him, and not a cataract but carries 
memories for him, and not a mountain-top but nods 
old recognition: his life, all encircled as in blessed 
mother's-arms, is it poorer than Slick's with the ass- 

I Lockhart's Life of Scott. 



334 THOMAS CARLYLE 

loads of yellow metal on his back? Unhappy Slick! 
Alas, there has so much grown nomadic, apelike, with 
us: so much will have, with whatever pain, repug- 
nance and ' impossibility,' to alter itself, to fix itself 
again — in some wise way, in any not delirious way ! 

A question arises here : Whether, in some ulterior, 
perhaps some not far-distant stage of this ' Chivalry of 
Labor,' your Master- Worker may not find it possible, 
and needful, to grant his Workers permanent interest 
in his enterprise and theirs? So that it become, in 
practical result, what in essential fact and justice it 
ever is, a joint enterprise; all men, from the Chief 
Master down to the lowest Overseer and Operative, 
economically as well as loyally concerned for it? — 
Which question I do not answer. The answer, near 
or else far, is perhaps. Yes ; — and yet one knows the 
difficulties. Despotism is essential in most enterprises ; 
I am told, they do not tolerate ' freedom of debate ' on 
board a Seventy-four ! Republican senate and plebis- 
cita would not answer well in Cotton-Mills. And yet 
observe there too : Freedom, not nomad's or ape's 
Freedom, but man's Freedom; this is indispensable. 
We must have it, and will have it! To reconcile 
Despotism with Freedom : — well, is that such a mys- 
tery? Do you not already know the way? It is to 
make your Despotism just. Rigorous as Destiny ; but 
just too, as Destiny and its Laws, The Laws of God: 
all men obey these, and have no ' Freedom ' at all but 
in obeying them. The way is already known, part of 
the way ; — and courage and some qualities are needed 
for walking on it ! 



XXVI 

Traffic 

By John Ruskin ^ 

My good Yorkshire friends, you asked me down 
here among your hills that I might talk to you about 
this Exchange you are going to build: but, earnestly 
and seriously asking you to pardon me, I am going to 
do nothing of the kind. I cannot talk, or at least can 
say very little, about this same Exchange. I must talk 
of quite other things, though not willingly ; — I could 
not deserve your pardon, if, when you invited me to 
speak on one subject, I wilfully spoke on another. But 
I cannot speak, to purpose, of anything about which I 
do not care ; and most simply and sorrowfully I have 
to tell you, in the outset, that I do not care about this 
Exchange of yours. 

If, however, when you sent me your invitation, I 
had answered, " I won't come, I don't care about the 
Exchange of Bradford," you would have been justly 
offended with me, not knowing the reasons of so blunt 
a carelessness. So I have come down, hoping that 
you will patiently let me tell you why, on this, and 
many other such occasions, I now remain silent, when 

I This lecture was delivered in the Town Hall, Bradford, April 21, 
1864, and was included by Ruskin in the Crown of Wild Olive, 1866. 
For a brief account of Ruskin see Note to the first essay in this volume. 
Ruskin's footnotes, where they are not necessary to an understanding of 
the text, have been omitted. — Editor. 

335 



336 JOHN RUSKIN 

formerly I should have caught at the opportunity of 
speaking to a gracious audience. 

In a word, then, I do not care about this Exchange 
— because you don't; and because you know perfectly 
well I cannot make you. Look at the essential condi- 
tions of the case, which you, as business men, know 
perfectly well, though perhaps you think I forget them. 
You are going to spend £30,000, which to you, collec- 
tively, is nothing; the buying a new coat is, as to the 
cost of it, a much more important matter of considera- 
tion to me, than building a new Exchange is to you. 
But you think you may as well have the right thing 
for your money. You know there are a great many 
odd styles of architecture about; you don't want to 
do anything ridiculous ; you hear of me, among others, 
as a respectable architectural man-milliner ; and you 
send for me, that I may tell you the leading fashion ; 
and what is, in our shops, for the moment, the newest 
and sweetest thing in pinnacles. 

Now, pardon me for telling you frankly, you cannot 
have good architecture merely by asking people's advice 
on occasion. All good architecture is the expression 
of national life and character ; and it is produced by a 
prevalent and eager national taste, or desire for beauty. 
And I want you to think a little of the deep significance 
of this word " taste " ; for no statement of mine has 
been more earnestly or oftener controverted than that 
good taste is essentially a moral quality. " No," say 
many of my antagonists, " taste is one thing, morality 
is another. Tell us what is pretty : we shall be glad 
to know that ; but we need no sermons — even were 
you able to preach them, which may be doubted." 

Permit me, therefore, to fortify this old dogma of 



TRAFFIC 337 

mine somewhat. Taste is not only a part and an index 
of morality ; — it is the only morality. The first, and 
last, and closest trial question to any living creature 
is, " What do you like ? " Tell me what you Hke, and 
I'll tell you what you are. Go out into the street, 
and ask the first man or woman you meet, what their 
" taste " is ; and if they answer candidly, you know 
them, body and soul. " You, my friend in the rags, 
with the unsteady gait, what do you like ? " "A pipe, 
and a quartern of gin." I know you. " You, good 
woman, with the quick step and tidy bonnet, what do 
you like ? " "A swept hearth, and a clean tea-table ; 
and my husband opposite me, and a baby at my 
breast." Good, I know you also. " You, little girl 
with the golden hair and the soft eyes, what do you 
like ? " " My canary, and a run among the wood 
hyacinths." " You, httle boy with the dirty hands, 
and the low forehead, what do you like?" "A shy 
at the sparrows, and a game at pitchf arthing." Good ; 
we know them all now. What more need we ask ? 

" Nay," perhaps you answer ; " we need rather to ask 
what these people and children do, than what they 
like. If they do right, it is no matter that they like 
what is wrong; and if they do wrong, it is no matter 
that they like what is right. Doing is the great thing ; 
and it does not matter that the man likes drinking, so 
that he does not drink ; nor that the little girl likes to 
be kind to her canary, if she will not learn her lessons ; 
nor that the little boy likes throwing stones at the 
sparrows, if he goes to the Sunday school." Indeed, 
for a short time, and in a provisional sense, this is true. 
For if, resolutely, people do what is right, in time to 
come they like doing it. But they only are in a right 



338 JOHN RUSKIN 

moral state when they have come to Hke doing it ; and 
as long as they don't like it, they are still in a vicious 
state. The man is not in health of body who is always 
thinking of the bottle in the cupboard, though he 
bravely bears his thirst ; but the man who heartily en- 
joys water in the morning, and wine in the evening, 
each in its proper quantity and time. And the entire 
object of true education is to make people not merely 
do the right things, but enjoy the right things : — not 
merely industrious, but to love industry — not merely 
learned, but to love knowledge — not merely pure, but 
to love purity — not merely just, but to hunger and 
thirst after justice. 

But you may answer or think, " Is the liking for 
outside ornaments, — for pictures, or statues, or furni- 
ture, or architecture, — a moral quality ? " Yes, most 
surely, if a rightly set liking. Taste for any pictures 
or statues is not a moral quality, but taste for good 
ones is. Only here again we have to define the word 
" good." I don't mean by " good," clever — or learned 
— or difficult in the doing. Take a picture by Teniers, 
of sots quarreling over their dice ; it is an entirely 
clever picture ; so clever that nothing in its kind has 
ever been done equal to it ; but it is also an entirely base 
and evil picture. It is an expression of delight in 
the prolonged contemplation of a vile thing, and delight 
in that is an " unmannered," or " immoral " quality. 
It is "bad taste" in the profoundest sense — it is the 
taste of the devils. On the other hand, a picture of 
Titian's, or a Greek statue, or a Greek coin, or a 
Turner landscape, expresses delight in the perpetual 
contemplation of a good and perfect thing. That is 
an entirely moral quality — it is the taste of the angels. 



TRAFFIC 339 

And all delight in fine art, and all love of it, resolve 
themselves into simple love of that which deserves love. 
That deserving is the qiiahty v^hich we call " loveli- 
ness " — (we ought to have an opposite word, hateli- 
ness, to be said of the things which deserve to be 
hated) ; and it is not an indififerent nor optional thing 
whether we love this or that; but it is just the vital 
function of all our being. What we like determines 
what we are, and is the sign of what we are ; and to 
teach taste is inevitably to form character. 

As I was thinking over this, in walking up Fleet 
Street the other day, my eye caught the title of a book 
standing open in a bookseller's window. It was — 
" On the necessity of the diffusion of taste among all 
classes." " Ah," I thought to myself, " my classifying 
friend, when you have diffused your taste, where will 
your classes be? The man who likes what you like, 
belongs to the same class with you, I think. Inevitably 
so. You may put him to other work if you choose ; 
but, by the condition you have brought him into, he will 
dislike the work as much as you would yourself. You 
get hold of a scavenger or a costermonger, who en- 
joyed the Newgate Calendar for literature, and ' Pop 
goes the Weasel ' for music. You think you can make 
him like Dante and Beethoven? I wish you joy of 
your lessons ; but if you do, you have made a gentleman 
of him: — he won't like to go back to his coster- 
mongering." 

And so completely and unexceptionally is this so, 
that, if I had time to-night, I could show you that a 
nation cannot be affected by any vice, or weakness, 
without expressing it, legibly, and for ever, either in 
bad art, or by want of art ; and that there is no national 



340 ' JOHN RUSKIN 

virtue, small or great, which is not manifestly expressed 
in all the art which circumstances enable the people 
possessing that virtue to produce. Take, for instance, 
your great English virtue of enduring and patient 
courage. You have at present in England only one art 
of any consequence — that is, iron-working. You know 
thoroughly well how to cast and hammer iron. Now, 
do you think, in those masses of lava which you build 
volcanic cones to melt, and which you forge at the 
mouths of the Infernos you have created ; do you think, 
on those iron plates, your courage and endurance are 
not written for ever, — not merely with an iron pen, but 
on iron parchment? And take also your great English 
vice — European vice — vice of all the world — vice of 
all other worlds that roll or shine in heaven, bearing 
with them yet the atmosphere of hell — the vice of 
jealousy, which brings competition into your commerce, 
treachery into your councils, and dishonor into your 
wars — that vice which has rendered for you, and for 
your next neighboring nation, the daily occupations of 
existence no longer possible, but with the mail upon 
your breasts and the sword loose in its sheath ; so that 
at last, you have realised for all the multitudes of the 
two great peoples who lead the so-called civilisation 
of the earth, — you have realised for them all, I say, in 
person and in policy, what was once true only of the 
rough Border riders of your Cheviot hills — 

" They carved at the meal 
With gloves of steel, 
And they drank the red wine through the helmet barr'd ; " — 

do you think that this national shame and dastardliness 
of heart are not written as legibly on every rivet of your 



TRAFFIC 341 

iron armor as the strength of the right hands that 
forged it? 

Friends, I know not whether this thing be the more 
ludicrous or the more melancholy. It is quite un- 
speakably both. Suppose, instead of being now sent 
for by you, I had been sent for by some private gentle- 
man, living in a suburban house, with his garden sepa- 
rated only by a fruit wall from his next door neighbor's ; 
and he had called me to consult with him on the fur- 
nishing of his drawing-room. I begin looking about 
me, and find the walls rather bare; I think such and 
such a paper might be desirable — perhaps a little 
fresco here and there on the ceiling — a damask cur- 
tain or so at the windows. " Ah," says my employer, 
" damask curtains, indeed ! That's all very fine, but 
you know I can't afford that kind of thing just now ! " 
" Yet the world credits you with a splendid income ! " 
" Ah, yes," says my friend, " but do you know, at pres- 
ent I am obliged to spend it nearly all in steel-traps ? " 
" Steel-traps ! for whom? " " Why, for that fellow on 
the other side the wall, you know : we're very good 
friends, capital friends ; but we are obliged to keep 
our traps set on both sides of the wall ; we could not 
possibly keep on friendly terms without them, and our 
spring guns. The worst of it is, we are both clever 
fellows enough ; and there's never a day passes that 
we don't find out a new trap, or a new gun-barrel, or 
something ; we spend about fifteen millions a year each 
in our traps, take it altogether; and I don't see how 
we're to do with less." A highly comic state of life 
for two private gentlemen ! but for two nations, it 
seems to me, not wholly comic. Bedlam would be 
comic, perhaps, if there were only one madman in it; 



342 JOHN RUSKIN 

and your Christmas pantomime is comic, when there 
is only one clown in it ; but when the whole world turns 
clown, and paints itself red with its own heart's blood 
instead of vermilion, it is something else than comic, 
I think. 

Mind, I know a great deal of this is play, and will- 
ingly allow for that. You don't know what to do with 
yourselves for a sensation : fox-hunting and cricketing 
will not carry you through the whole of this unendur- 
ably long mortal life : you liked pop-guns when you 
were schoolboys, and rifles and Armstrongs are only 
the same things better made : but then the worst of it 
is, that what was play to you when boys, was not play 
to the sparrows ; and what is play to you now, is not 
play to the small birds of State neither; and for the 
black eagles, you are somewhat shy of taking shots 
at them, if I mistake not, 

I must get back to the matter in hand, however. Be- 
lieve me, without farther instance, I could show you, 
in all time, that every nation's vice, or virtue, was 
written in its art: the soldiership of early Greece; the 
sensuality of late Italy ; the visionary religion of Tus- 
cany ; the splendid human energy of Venice. I have 
no time to do this to-night (I have done it elsewhere 
before now) ; but I proceed to apply the principle to 
ourselves in a more searching manner. 

I notice that among all the new buildings which 
cover your once wild hills, churches and schools are 
mixed in due, that is to say, in large proportion, with 
your mills and mansions ; and I notice also that the 
churches and schools are almost always Gothic, and the 
mansions and mills are never Gothic. May I ask the 
meaning of this? for, remember, it is peculiarly a 



TRAFFIC 343 

modern phenomenon. When Gothic was invented, 
houses were Gothic as well as churches; and when 
the Italian style superseded the Gothic, churches were 
Italian as well as houses. If there is a Gothic spire 
to the cathedral of Antwerp, there is a Gothic belfry 
to the Hotel de Ville at Brussels ; if Inigo Jones builds 
an Italian Whitehall, Sir Christopher Wren builds an 
Italian St. Paul's. But now you live under one school 
of architecture, and worship under another. What 
do you mean by doing this ? Am I to understand that 
you are thinking of changing your architecture back 
to Gothic ; and that you treat your churches experi- 
mentally, because it does not matter what mistakes 
you make in a church? Or am I to understand that 
you consider Gothic a pre-eminently sacred and beau- 
tiful mode of building, which you think, like the fine 
frankincense, should be mixed for the tabernacle only, 
and reserved for your religious services? For if this 
be the feeling, though it may seem at first as if it 
were graceful and reverent, at the root of the matter, 
it signifies neither more nor less than that you have 
separated your religion from your life. 

" But what has all this to do with our Exchange? " 
you ask me, impatiently. My dear friends, it has just 
everything to do with it ; on these inner and great 
questions depend all the outer and little ones ; and if 
you have asked me down here to speak to you, because 
you had before been interested in anything I have 
written, you must know that all I have yet said about 
architecture was to show this. The book I called The 
Seven Lamps was to show that certain right states of 
temper and moral feeling were the magic powers by 



344 JOHN RUSK IN 

which all good architecture, without exception, had 
been produced. The Stones of Venice had, from be- 
ginning to end, no other aim than to show that the 
Gothic architecture of Venice had arisen out of, and 
indicated in all its features, a state of pure national 
faith, and of domestic virtue ; and that its Renaissance 
architecture had arisen out of, and in all its features 
indicated, a state of concealed national infidelity, and 
of domestic corruption. And now, you ask me what 
style is best to build in, and how can I answer, knowing 
the meaning of the two styles, but by another question 
— do you mean to build as Christians or as Infidels ? 
And still more — do you mean to build as honest 
Christians or as honest Infidels ? as thoroughly and con- 
fessedly either one or the other ? You don't like to be 
asked such rude questions. I cannot help it ; they are 
of much more importance than this Exchange busi- 
ness; and if they can be at once answered, the Ex- 
change business settles itself in a moment. But before 
I press them farther, I must ask leave to explain one 
point clearly. 

In all my past work, my endeavor has been to show 
that good architecture is essentially religious — the 
production of a faithful and virtuous, not of an infidel 
and corrupted people. But in the course of doing this, 
I have had also to show that good architecture is not 
ecclesiastical. People are so apt to look upon religion 
as the business of the clergy, not their own, that the 
moment they hear of anything depending on " religion," 
they think it must also have depended on the priest- 
hood ; and I have had to take what place was to be 
occupied between these two errors, and fight both, often 



TRAFFIC 345 

with seeming contradiction. Good architecture is the 
work of good and believing men ; therefore, you say, 
at least some people say, " Good architecture must 
essentially have been the work of the clergy, not of the 
laity." No — a thousand times no ; good architecture 
has always been the work of the commonalty, not of 
the clergy. " What," you say, " those glorious cathe- 
drals — the pride of Europe — did their builders not 
form Gothic architecture ? " No ; they corrupted 
Gothic architecture. Gothic was formed in the baron's 
castle, and the burgher's street. It was formed by the 
thoughts, and hands, and powers of laboring citizens 
and warrior kings. By the monk it was used as an 
instrument for the aid of his superstition : when that 
superstition became a beautiful madness, and the best 
hearts of Europe vainly dreamed and pined in the 
cloister, and vainly raged and perished in the crusade, 

— through that fury of perverted faith and wasted 
war, the Gothic rose also to its loveliest, most fantastic, 
and, finally, most foolish dreams ; and in those dreams 
was lost. 

I hope, now, that there is no risk of your misunder- 
standing me when I come to the gist of what I want 
to say to-night ; — when I repeat, that every great na- 
tional architecture has been the result and exponent 
of a great national religion. You can't have bits of it 
here, bits there — you must have it everywhere or no- 
where. It is not the monopoly of a clerical company 

— it is not the exponent of a theological dogma — it 
is not the hieroglyphic writing of an initiated priest- 
hood ; it is the manly language of a people inspired by 
resolute and common purpose, and rendering resolute 



346 JOHN RUSKIN 

and common fidelity to the legible laws of an undoubted 
God. 

You know we are speaking always of the real, active, 
continual, national worship ; that by which men act, 
while they live ; not that which they talk of, when they 
die. Now, we have, indeed, a nominal religion, to 
which we pay tithes of property and sevenths of time ; 
but we have also a practical and earnest religion, to 
which we devote nine-tenths of our property and six- 
sevenths of our time. And we dispute a great deal 
about the nominal religion : but we are all unanimous 
about this practical one ; of which I think you will ad- 
mit that the ruling goddess may be best generally de- 
scribed as the " Goddess of Getting-on," or " Britannia 
of the Market." The Athenians had an " Athena 
Agoraia," or Athena of the Market ; but she was a sub- 
ordinate type of their goddess, while our Britannia 
Agoraia is the principal type of ours. And all your 
great architectural works are, of course, built to her. 
It is long since you built a great cathedral ; and how 
you would laugh at me if I proposed building a cathe- 
dral on the top of one of these hills of yours, to make it 
an Acropolis ! But your railroad mounds, vaster than 
the walls of Babylon ; your railroad stations, vaster 
than the temple of Ephesus, and innumerable ; your 
chimneys, how much more mighty and costly than 
cathedral spires ! your harbor-piers ; your warehouses ; 
your exchanges ! — all these are built to your great 
Goddess of " Getting-on " ; and she has formed, and 
will continue to form, your architecture, as long as you 
worship her ; and it is quite vain to ask me to tell you 
how to build to her; you know far better than I. 



TRAFFIC 347 

There might, indeed, on some theories, be a conceiv- 
ably good architecture for Exchanges — that is to say, 
if there were any heroism in the fact or deed of ex- 
change, which might be typically carved on the outside 
of your building. For, you know, all beautiful archi- 
tecture must be adorned with sculpture or painting; 
and for sculpture or painting, you must have a subject. 
And hitherto it has been a received opinion among 
the nations of the world that the only right subjects 
for either, were heroisms of some sort. Even on his 
pots and his flagons, the Greek put a Hercules slay- 
ing lions, or an Apollo slaying serpents, or Bacchus 
slaying melancholy giants, and earthborn despon- 
dencies. On his temples, the Greek put contests of 
great warriors in founding states, or of gods with evil 
spirits. On his houses and temples alike, the Christian 
put carvings of angels conquering devils; or of hero- 
martyrs exchanging this world for another: subject in- 
appropriate, I think, to our direction of exchange here. 
And the Master of Christians not only left His fol- 
lowers without any orders as to the sculpture of affairs 
of exchange on the outside of buildings, but gave some 
strong evidence of His dislike of affairs of exchange 
within them. And yet there might surely be a heroism 
in such affairs; and all commerce become a kind of 
selling of doves, not impious. The wonder has always 
been great to me, that heroism has never been supposed 
to be in anywise consistent with the practice of supply- 
ing people with food, or clothes ; but rather with that 
of quartering oneself upon them for food, and strip- 
ping them of their clothes. Spoiling of armor is an 
heroic deed in all ages ; but the selling of clothes, old, 
or new, has never taken any color of magnanimity. 



348 JOHN RUSKIN 

Yet one does not see why feeding the hungry and cloth- 
ing the naked should ever become base businesses, even 
when engaged in on a large scale. If one could con- 
trive to attach the notion of conquest to them anyhow ! 
so that, supposing there were anywhere an obstinate 
race, who refused to be comforted, one might take 
some pride in giving them compulsory comfort ! and, as 
it were, " occiiping a country " with one's gifts, instead 
of one's armies ? If one could only consider it as much 
a victory to get a barren field sown, as to get an eared 
field stripped; and contend who should build villages, 
instead of who should " carry " them ! Are not all 
forms of heroism conceivable in doing these service- 
able deeds? You doubt who is strongest? It might 
be ascertained by push of spade, as well as push of 
sword. Who is wisest? There are witty things to be 
thought of in planning other business than campaigns. 
Who is bravest? There are always the elements to 
fight with, stronger than men ; and nearly as merciless. 
The only absolutely and unapproachably heroic ele- 
ment in the soldier's work seems to be — that he is paid 
little for it — and regularly : while you traffickers, and 
exchangers, and others occupied in presumably benev- 
olent business, like to be paid much for it — and by 
chance. I never can make out how it is that a knight- 
errant does not expect to be paid for his trouble, but a 
pedlar-errant always does ; — that people are willing to 
take hard knocks for nothing, but never to sell ribands 
cheap ; that they are ready to go on fervent crusades, to 
recover the tomb of a buried God, but never on any 
travels to fulfil the orders of a living one ; — that they 
will go anywhere barefoot to preach their faith, but 
must be well bribed to practise it, and are perfectly 



TRAFFIC 349 

ready to give the Gospel gratis, but never the loaves 
and fishes. 

If you chose to take the matter up on any such 
soldierly principle; to do your commerce, and your 
feeding of nations, for fixed salaries ; and to be as par- 
ticular about giving people the best food, and the best 
cloth, as soldiers are about giving them the best gun- 
powder, I could carve something for you on your ex- 
change worth looking at. But I can only at present 
suggest decorating its frieze with pendant purses ; and 
making its pillars broad at the base, for the sticking of 
bills. And in the innermost chambers of it there might 
be a statue of Britannia of the Market, who may have, 
perhaps advisably, a partridge for her crest, typical 
at once of her courage in fighting for noble ideas, and 
of her interest in game ; and round its neck, the in- 
scription in golden letters, " Perdix fovit quae non 
peperit." ^ Then, for her spear, she might have a 
weaver's beam; and on her shield, instead of St. 
George's Cross, the Milanese boar, semi-fleeced, with 
the town of Gennesaret proper, in the field ; and the 
legend, " In the best market," and her corslet, of leather, 
folded over her heart in the shape of a purse, with 
thirty slits in it, for a piece of money to go in at, on 
each day of the month. And I doubt not but that 
people would come to see your exchange, and its god-: 
dess, with applause. 

Nevertheless, I want to point out to you certain 
strange characters in this goddess of yours. She dif- 
fers from the great Greek and Mediaeval deities essen- 

1 Jerem. xvii. ii, (best in Septuagint and Vulgate). "As the par- 
tridge, fostering what she brought not forth, so he that getteth riches, 
not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end 
shall be a fool." 



350 JOHN RUSKIN 

tially in two things — first, as to the continuance of 
her presumed power ; secondly, as to the extent of it. 

1st, as to the Continuance, 

The Greek Goddess of Wisdom gave continual in- 
crease of wisdom, as the Christian Spirit of Comfort 
(or Comforter) continual increase of comfort. There 
was no question, with these, of any limit or cessation 
of function. But with your Agora Goddess, that is 
just the most important question. Getting on — but 
whereto? Gathering together — but how much? Do 
you mean to gather always — never to spend? If so, 
I wish you joy of your goddess, for I am just as well 
off as you, without the trouble of worshipping her at 
all. But if you do not spend, somebody else will — 
somebody else must. And it is because of this (among 
many other such errors) that I have fearlessly declared 
your so-called science of Political Economy to be no 
science; because, namely, it has omitted the study of 
exactly the most important branch of the business — 
the study of spending. For spend you must, and as 
much as you make, ultimately. You gather corn : — 
will you bury England under a heap of grain ; or will 
you, when you have gathered, finally eat ? You gather 
gold: — will you make your house-roofs of it, or pave 
your streets with it? That is still one way of spend- 
ing it. But if you keep it, that you may get more, I'll 
give you more ; I'll give you all the gold you want — 
all you can imagine — if you can tell me what you'll 
do with it. You shall have thousands of gold pieces; 
— thousands of thousands — millions — mountains, 
of gold: where will you keep them? Will you put an 
Olympus of silver upon a golden Pelion — make Ossa 
like a wart? Do you think the rain and dew would 



TRAFFIC 351 

then come down to you, in the streams from such 
mountains, more blessedly than they will down the 
mountains which God has made for you, of moss and 
whinstone? But it is not gold that you want to 
gather ! What is it ? greenbacks ? No ; not those 
neither. What is it then — is it ciphers after a capital 
I ? Cannot you practice writing ciphers, and write as 
many as you want! Write ciphers for an hour every 
morning, in a big book, and say every evening, I am 
worth all those noughts more than I was yesterday. 
Won't that do? Well, what in the name of Plutus is 
it you want? Not gold, not greenbacks, not ciphers 
after a capital I? You will have to answer, after all, 
" No ; we want, somehow or other, money's worth." 
Well, what is that? Let your Goddess of Getting-on 
discover it, and let her learn to stay therein. 

II. But there is yet another question to be asked 
respecting this Goddess of Getting-on. The first was 
of the continuance of her power; the second is of its 
extent. 

Pallas and the Madonna were supposed to be all the 
world's Pallas, and all the world's Madonna. They 
could teach all men, and they could comfort all men. 
But, look strictly into the nature of the power of your 
Goddess of Getting-on; and you will find she is the 
Goddess — not of everybody's getting on — but only 
of somebody's getting on. This is a vital, or rather 
deathful, distinction. Examine it in your own ideal 
of the state of national life which this Goddess is to 
evoke and maintain. I asked you what it was, when 
I was last here ; ^ — you have never told me. Now, 
shall I try to tell you ? 

1 The Tiiio Paths. 



352 JOHN RUSKIN 

Your ideal of human life then is, I think, that it 
should be passed in a pleasant undulating world, with 
iron and coal everywhere underneath it. On each 
pleasant bank of this world is to be a beautiful mansion, 
with two wings ; and stables, and coach-houses ; a 
moderately-sized park ; a large garden and hot-houses ; 
and pleasant carriage drives through the shrubberies. 
In this mansion are to live the favored votaries of the 
Goddess ; the English gentleman, with his gracious 
wife, and his beautiful family; he always able to have 
the boudoir and the jewels for the wife, and the beauti- 
ful ball dresses for the daughters, and hunters for the 
sons, and a shooting in the Highlands for himself. At 
the bottom of the bank, is to be the mill ; not less than 
a quarter of a mile long, with one steam engine at each 
end, and two in the middle, and a chimney three hun- 
dred feet high. In this mill are to be in constant em- 
ployment from eight hundred to a thousand workers, 
who never drink, never strike, always go to church on 
Sunday, and always express themselves in respectful 
language. 

Is not that, broadly, and in the main features, the 
kind of thing you propose to yourselves? It is very 
pretty indeed, seen from above; not at all so pretty, 
seen from below. For, observe, while to one family 
this deity is indeed the Goddess of Getting-on, to a 
thousand families she is the Goddess of not Getting-on. 
" Nay," you say, " they have all their chance." Yes, 
so has every one in a lottery, but there must always 
be the same number of blanks. " Ah ! but in a lottery 
it is not skill and intelligence which take the lead, but 
blind chance." What then ! do you think the old 
practice, that " they should take who have the power, 



TRAFFIC 353 

and they should keep who can," is less iniquitous, when 
the power has become power of brains instead of fist? 
and that, though we may not take advantage of a 
child's or a woman's weakness, we may of a man's 
fooHshness? "Nay, but finally, work must be done, 
and some one must be at the top, some one at the 
bottom." Granted, my friends. Work must always 
be, and captains of work must always be; and if you 
in the least remember the tone of any of my writings, 
you must know that they are thought unfit for this age, 
because they are always insisting on need of govern- 
ment, and speaking with scorn of liberty. But I beg 
you to observe that there is a wide difference between 
being captains or governors of work, and taking the 
profits of it. It does not follow, because you are gen- 
eral of an army, that you are to take all the treasure, or 
land, it wins (if it fight for treasure or land) ; neither, 
because you are king of a nation, that you are to con- 
sume all the profits of the nation's work. Real kings, 
on the contrary, are known invariably by their doing 
quite the reverse of this, — by their taking the least 
possible quantity of the nation's work for themselves. 
There is no test of real kinghood so infallible as that. 
Does the crowned creature live simply, bravely, un- 
ostentatiously? probably he is a King. Does he cover 
his body with jewels, and his table with delicates? in 
all probability he is not a King. It is possible he may 
be, as Solomon was ; but that is when the nation shares 
his splendor with him. Solomon made gold, not only 
to be in his own palace as stones, but to be in Jerusalem 
as stones. But, even so, for the most part, these 
splendid kinghoods expire in ruin, and only the true 
kinghoods live, which are of royal laborers governing 



354 JOHN RUSKIN 

loyal laborers ; who, both leading rough lives, establish 
the true dynasties. Conclusively you will find that 
because you are king of a nation, it does not follow that 
you are to gather for yourself all the wealth of that 
nation; neither, because you are king of a small part 
of the nation, and lord over the means of its main- 
tenance — over field, or mill, or mine, — are you to 
take all the produce of that piece of the foundation of 
national existence for yourself. 

You will tell me I need not preach against these 
things, for I cannot mend them. No, good friends, I 
cannot ; but you can, and you will ; or something else 
can and will. Even good things have no abiding power 
— and shall these evil things persist in victorious evil? 
All history shows, on the contrary, that to be the exact 
thing they never can do. Change must come ; but it is 
ours to determine whether change of growth, or change 
of death. Shall the Parthenon be in ruins on its rock, 
and Bolton priority in its meadow, but these mills of 
yours be the consummation of the buildings of the 
earth, and their wheels be as the wheels of eternity? 
Think you that " men may come, and men may go," 
but — mills — go on for ever? Not so; out of these, 
better or worse shall come ; and it is for you to choose 
which. 

I know that none of this wrong is done with deliber- 
ate purpose. I know, on the contrary, that you wish 
your workmen well; that you do much for them, and 
that you desire to do more for them, if you saw your 
way to such benevolence safely. I know that even all 
this wrong and misery are brought about by a warped 
sense of duty, each of you striving to do his best; 
but, unhappily, not knowing for whom this best should 



TRAFFIC 355 

be done. And all our hearts have been betrayed by 
the plausible impiety of the modern economist, telling 
us that, " To do the best for ourselves, is finally to do 
the best for others." Friends, our great Master said 
not so ; and most absolutely we shall find this vi^orld is 
not made so. Indeed, to do the best for others, is finally 
to do the best for ourselves ; but it v^ill not do to have 
our eyes fixed on that issue. The Pagans had got 
beyond that. Hear what a Pagan says of this matter; 
hear what were, perhaps, the last written words of 
Plato, — if not the last actually written (for this we 
cannot know), yet assuredly in fact and power his 
parting words — in which, endeavoring to give full 
crowning and harmonious close to all his thoughts, and 
to speak the sum of them by the imagined sentence of 
the Great Spirit, his strength and his heart fail him, 
and the words cease, broken off for ever. 

They are at the close of the dialogue called Critias, 
in which he describes, partly from real tradition, partly 
in ideal dream, the early state of Athens ; and the 
genesis, and order, and religion, of the fabled isle of 
Atlantis ; in which genesis he conceives the same first 
perfection and final degeneracy of man, which in our 
own Scriptural tradition is expressed by saying that 
the Sons of God inter-married with the daughters of 
men, for he supposes the earliest race to have been in- 
deed the children of God ; and to have corrupted them- 
selves, until " their spot was not the spot of his chil- 
dren." And this, he says, was the end; that indeed 
" through many generations, so long as the God's 
nature in them yet was full, they were submissive to 
the sacred laws, and carried themselves lovingly to all 
that had kindred with them in divineness ; for their 



356 JOHN RUSKIN 

uttermost spirit was faithful and true, and in every 
wise great; so that, in all meekness of zvisdom they 
dealt with each other, and took all the chances of life; 
and despising all things except virtue, they cared Httle 
what happened day by day, and bore lightly the burden 
of gold and of possessions ; for they saw that, if only 
their common love and virtue increased, all these things 
would be increased together with them; but to set their 
esteem and ardent pursuit upon material possession 
would be to lose that first, and their virtue and affection 
together with it. And by such reasoning, and what of 
the divine nature remained in them, they gained all 
this greatness of which we have already told ; but 
when the God's part of them faded and became extinct, 
being mixed again and again, and efifaced by the preva- 
lent mortality ; and the human nature at last exceeded, 
they then became unable to endure the courses of for- 
tune ; and fell into shapelessness of life, and baseness 
in the sight of him who could see, having lost every- 
thing that was fairest of their honor ; while to the blind 
hearts which could not discern the true life, tending to 
happiness, it seemed that they were then chiefly noble 
and happy, being filled with all iniquity of inordinate 
possession and power. Whereupon, the God of Gods, 
whose Kinghood is in laws, beholding a once just nation 
thus cast into misery, and desiring to lay such punish- 
ment upon them as might make them repent into re- 
straining, gathered together all the gods into his dwell- 
ing place, which from heaven's centre overlooks what- 
ever has partin creation; and having assembled them, 

he said " 

The rest is silence. Last words of the chief wisdom 
of the heathen, spoken of this idol of riches ; this idol 



TRAFFIC 357 

of yours; this golden image, high by measureless 
cubits, set up where your green fields of England are 
furnace-burnt into the likeness of the plain of Dura: 
this idol, forbidden to us, first of all idols, by our own 
Master and faith ; forbidden to us also by every human 
lip that has ever, in any age or people, been accounted 
of as able to speak according to the purposes of God. 
Continue to make that forbidden deity your principal 
one, and soon no more art, no more science, no more 
pleasure will be possible. Catastrophe will come ; or, 
worse than catastrophe, slow mouldering and withering 
into Hades. But if you can fix some conception of 
a true human state of life to be striven for — life, 
good for all men, as for yourselves ; if you can deter- 
mine some honest and simple order of existence ; fol- 
lowing those trodden ways of wisdom, which are pleas- 
antness, and seeking her quiet and withdrawn paths, 
which are peace ; — then, and so sanctifying wealth into 
" commonwealth," all your art, your literature, your 
daily labors, your domestic afifection, and citizen's duty, 
will join and increase into one magnificent harmony. 
You will know then how to build, well enough ; you 
will build with stone well, but with flesh better ; temples 
not made with hands, but riveted of hearts ; and that 
kind of marble, ciimson-veined, is indeed eternal. 



XXVII 

The Mystery of Life and Its Arts 

By John Ruskin ^ 

When I accepted the privilege of addressing you to- 
day, I was not aware of a restriction with respect to 
the topics of discussion which may be brought before 
this Society,^ — a restriction which, though entirely 
wise and right under the circumstances contemplated 
in its introduction, would necessarily have disabled me, 
thinking as I think, from preparing any lecture for you 
on the subject of art in a form which might be perma- 
nently useful. Pardon me, therefore, in so far as I 
must transgress such limitation ; for indeed my in- 
fringement will be of the letter — not of the spirit — 
of your commands. In whatever I may say touching 
the religion which has been the foundation of art, or 
the policy which has contributed to its power, if I 
ofifend one, I shall offend all; for I shall take no note 
of any separations in creeds, or antagonisms in parties : 
neither do I fear that ultimately I shall offend any, by 
proving — or at least stating as capable of positive 
proof — the connection of all that is best in the crafts 

1 This was first read at the Royal College of Science in Dublin in 
1868 and was in 1871 included by Ruskin as a third lecture in Sesame 
and Lilies, the first two lectures of which had been published in 1865. — 
Editor. 

2 That no reference should be made to religious questions. 

358 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 359 

and arts of man, with the simphcity of his faith, and 
the sincerity of his patriotism. 

But I speak to you under another disadvantage, by 
which I am checked in frankness of utterance, not here 
only, but everywhere : namely, that I am never fully 
aware how far my audiences are disposed to give me 
credit for real knowledge of my subject, or how far 
they grant me attention only because I have been some- 
times thought an ingenious or pleasant essayist upon 
it. For I have had what, in many respects, I boldly 
call the misfortune, to set my words sometimes prettily 
together ; not without a foolish vanity in the poor knack 
that I had of doing so: until I was heavily punished 
for this pride, by finding that many people thought of 
the words only, and cared nothing for their meaning. 
Happily, therefore, the power of using such pleasant 
language — if indeed it ever were mine — is passing 
away from me ; and whatever I am now able to say 
at all, I find myself forced to say with great plainness. 
For my thoughts have changed also, as my words have ; 
and whereas in earlier life, what little influence I ob- 
tained was due perhaps chiefly to the enthusiasm with 
which I was able to dwell on the beauty of the physical 
clouds, and of their colors in the sky ; so all the influ- 
ence I now desire to retain must be due to the earnest- 
ness with which I am endeavoring to trace the form 
and beauty of another kind of cloud than those ; the 
bright cloud of which it is written — " What is your 
life? It is even as a vapor that appeareth for a little 
time, and then vanisheth away." 

I suppose few people reach the middle or latter period 
of their age, without having, at some moment of change 
or disappointment, felt the truth of those bitter words ; 



36o JOHN RUSK IN 

and been startled by the fading of the sunshine from 
the cloud of their life into the sudden agony of the 
knowledge that the fabric of it was as fragile as a 
dream, and the endurance of it as transient as the dew. 
But it is not always that, even at such times of melan- 
choly surprise, we can enter into any true perception 
that this human life shares in the nature of it, not 
only the evanescence, but the mystery of the cloud; 
that its avenues are wreathed in darkness, and its forms 
and courses no less fantastic, than spectral and ob- 
scure ; so that not only in the vanity which we cannot 
grasp, but in the shadow which we cannot pierce, it is 
true of this cloudy life of ours, that " man walketh in 
a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain," 

And least of all, whatever may have been the eager- 
ness of our passions, or the height of our pride, are 
we able to understand in its depths the third and most 
solemn character in which our life is like those clouds 
of heaven ; that to it belongs not only their transience, 
not only their mystery, but also their power; that in 
the cloud of the human soul there is a fire stronger than 
the lightning, and a grace more precious than the rain ; 
and that though of the good and evil it shall one day 
be said alike, that the place that knew them knows 
them no more, there is an infinite separation between 
those whose brief presence had there been a blessing, 
like the mist of Eden that went up from the earth to 
water the garden, and those whose place knew them 
only as a drifting and changeful shade, of whom the 
Heavenly sentence is, that they are " wells without 
water ; clouds that are carried with a tempest, to whom 
the mist of darkness is reserved forever." 

To those among us, however, who have lived long 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 361 

enough to form some just estimate of the rate of the 
changes which are, hour by hour in accelerating catas- 
trophe, manifesting themselves in the laws, the arts, 
and the creeds of men, it seems to me, that now at least, 
if never at any former time, the thoughts of the true 
nature of our life, and of its powers and responsibili- 
ties, should present themselves with absolute sadness 
and sternness. And although I know that this feeling 
is much deepened in my own mind by disappointment, 
which, by chance, has attended the greater number of 
my cherished purposes, I do not for that reason distrust 
the feeling itself, though I am on my guard against 
an exaggerated degree of it: nay, I rather believe that 
in periods of new effort and violent change, disappoint- 
ment is a wholesome medicine ; and that in the secret 
of it, as in the twilight so beloved by Titian, we may 
see the colors of things with deeper truth than in the 
most dazzling sunshine. . . . You know there is a ten- 
dency in the minds of many men, when they are heavily 
disappointed in the main purposes of their life, to feel, 
and perh^s in warning, perhaps in mockery, to de- 
clare, that life itself is a vanity. Because it has dis- 
appointed them, they think its nature is of disappoint- 
ment always, or at best, of pleasure that can be grasped 
by imagination only ; that the cloud of it has no strength 
nor fire within ; but is a painted cloud only, to be de- 
lighted in, yet despised. You know how beautifully 
Pope has expressed this particular phase of thought : — 

" Meanwhile opinion gilds, with varying rays, 
These painted clouds that beautify our days; 
Each want of happiness by hope supplied, 
And each vacuity of sense, by pride. 
Hope builds as fast as Knowledge can destroy; 



362 JOHN RUSKIN 

In Folly's cup, still laughs the bubble joy. 
One pleasure past, another still we gain, 
And not a vanity is given in vain." 

But the effect of failure upon my own mind has been 
jiist the reverse of this. The more that my hfe disap- 
pointed me, the more solemn and wonderful it became 
to me. It seemed, contrarily to Pope's saying, that the 
vanity of it zvas indeed given in vain; but that there 
was something behind the veil of it, which was not 
vanity. It became to me not a painted cloud, but a 
terrible and impenetrable one : not a mirage, which 
vanished as I drew near, but a pillar of darkness, to 
which I was forbidden to draw near. For I saw that 
both my own failure, and such success in petty things 
as in its poor triumph seemed to me worse than failure, 
came from the want of sufficiently earnest eft"ort to 
understand the whole law and meaning of existence, 
and to bring it to noble and due end ; as, on the other 
hand, I saw more and more clearly that all enduring 
success in the arts, or in any other occupation, had 
come from the ruling of lower purposes, not by a con- 
viction of their nothingness, but by a solemn faith in 
the advancing power of human nature, or in the prom- 
ise, however dimly apprehended, that the mortal part 
of it would one day be swallowed up in immortality ; 
and that, indeed, the arts themselves never had reached 
any vital strength or honor, but in the effort to pro- 
claim this immortality, and in the service either of 
great and just religion, or of some unselfish patriotism, 
and law of such national life as must be the foundation 
of religion. 

Nothing that I have ever said is more true or neces- 
sary — nothing has been more misunderstood or mis- 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 363 

applied — than my strong assertion that the arts can 
never be right themselves unless their motive is right. 
It is misunderstood this way : weak painters, who have 
never learned their business, and cannot lay a true line, 
continually come to me, crying out — " Look at this 
picture of mine ; it must be good, I had such a lovely 
motive. I have put my whole heart into it, and taken 
years to think over its treatment." Well, the only 
answer for these people is — if one had the cruelty to 
make it — " Sir, you cannot think over anything in any 
number of years, — you haven't the head to do it ; and 
though you had fine motives, strong enough to make 
you burn yourself in a slow fire, if only first you could 
paint a picture, you can't paint one, nor half an inch of 
one; you haven't the hand to do it." 

But, far more decisively we have to say to the men 
who do know their business, or may know it if they 
choose — " Sir, you have this gift, and a mighty one; 
see that you serve your nation faithfully with it. It is 
a greater trust than ships and armies : you might cast 
them away, if you were their captain, with less treason 
to your people than in casting your own glorious power 
away, and serving the devil with it instead of men. 
Ships and armies you may replace if they are lost, but 
a great intellect, once abused, is a curse to the earth 
forever." 

This, then, I meant by saying that the arts must 
have noble motive. This also I said respecting them, 
that they never had prospered, nor could prosper, but 
when they had such true purpose, and were devoted 
to the proclamation of divine truth or law. And yet 
I saw also that they had always failed in this procla- 
mation — that poetry, and sculpture, and painting, 



364 JOHN RUSKIN 

though only great when they strove to teach us some- 
thing about the gods, never had taught us anything 
trustworthy about the gods, but had always betrayed 
their trust in the crisis of it, and, with their powers at 
the full reach, became ministers to pride and to lust. 
And I felt also, with increasing amazement, the uncon- 
querable apathy in ourselves the hearers, no less than 
in these the teachers ; and that while the wisdom and 
rightness of every act and art of life could only be 
consistent with a right understanding of the ends of 
life, we were all plunged as in a languid dream — our 
hearts fat, and our eyes heavy, and our ears closed, 
lest the inspiration of hand or voice should reach us — 
lest we should see with our eyes, and understand with 
our hearts, and be healed. 

This intense apathy in all of us is the first great 
mystery of life ; it stands in the way of every percep- 
tion, every virtue. There is no making ourselves feel 
enough astonishment at it. That the occupations or 
pastimes of Hfe should have no motive, is understand- 
able; but — That life itself should have no motive — 
that we neither care to find out what it may lead to, 
nor to guard against its being forever taken away from 
us — here is a mystery indeed. For just suppose I 
were able to call at this moment to any one in this 
audience by name, and to tell him positively that I 
knew a large estate had been lately left to him on 
some curious conditions ; but that though I knew it 
was large, I did not know how large, nor even where 
it was — whether in the East Indies or the West, or 
in England, or at the Antipodes. I only knew it was 
a vast estate, and that there was a chance of his losing 
it altogether if he did not soon find out on what terms 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 365 

it had been left to him. Suppose I were able to say 
this positively to any single man in this audience, and 
he knew that I did not speak without warrant, do you 
think that he would rest content with that vague knowl- 
edge, if it were anywise possible to obtain more? 
Would he not give every energy to, find some trace of 
the facts, and never rest till he had ascertained where 
this place was, and what it was like ? And suppose he 
were a young man, and all he could discover by his 
best endeavor was that the estate was never to be his 
at all, unless he persevered, during certain years of 
probation, in an orderly and industrious life ; but that, 
according to the rightness of his conduct, the portion 
of the estate assigned to him would be greater or less, 
so that it literally depended on his behavior from day 
to day whether he got ten thousand a year, or thirty 
thousand a year, or nothing whatever — would you not 
think it strange if the youth never troubled himself to 
satisfy the conditions in any way, nor even to know 
what was required of him, but lived exactly as he 
chose, and never inquired whether his chances of the 
estate were increasing or passing away? Well, you 
know that this is actually and literally so with the 
greater number of the educated persons now living in 
Christian countries. Nearly every man and woman 
in any company such as this, outwardly professes to 
believe — and a large number unquestionably think they 
believe — much more than this; not only that a quite 
unlimited estate is in prospect for them if they please 
the Holder of it, but that the infinite contrary of such 
a possession — an estate of perpetual misery — is in 
store for them if they displease this great Land-Holder, 
this great Heaven-Holder. And yet there is not one 



366 JOHN RUSKIN 

in a thousand of these human souls that cares to think, 
for ten minutes of the day, where this estate is or how 
beautiful it is, or what kind of life they are to lead 
in it, or what kind of life they must lead to obtain it. 

You fancy that you care to know this: so little 
do you care that, probably, at this moment many of you 
are displeased with me for talking of the matter ! You 
came to hear about the Art of this world, not about the 
Life of the next, and you are provoked with me for 
talking of what you can hear any Sunday in church. 
But do not be afraid. I will tell you something before 
you go about pictures, and carvings, and pottery, and 
what else you would like better to hear of than the 
other world. Nay, perhaps you say, " We want you 
to talk of pictures and pottery, because we are sure 
that you know something of them, and you know 
nothing of the other world." Well — I don't. That 
is quite true. But the very strangeness and mystery 
of which I urge you to take notice, is in this — that I 
do not ; — nor you either. Can you answer a single 
bold question unflinchingly about that other world? — 
Are you sure there is a heaven? Sure there is a hell? 
Sure that men are dropping before your faces through 
the pavements of these streets into eternal fire, or sure 
that they are not? Sure that at your own death you 
are going to be delivered from all sorrow, to be endowed 
with all virtue, to be gifted with all felicity, and raised 
into perpetual companionship with a King, compared 
to whom the kings of the earth are as grasshoppers, 
and the nations as the dust of His feet? Are you sure 
of this? or, if not sure, do any of us so much as care 
to make it sure ? and, if not, how can anything that we 
do be right — how can anything we think be wise? 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 367 

what honor can there be in the arts that amuse us, or 
what profit in the possessions that please? 

Is not this a mystery of Hfe? 

But farther, you may, perhaps, think it a beneficent 
ordinance for the generaHty of men that they do not, 
with earnestness or anxiety, dwell on such questions of 
the future because the business of the day could not 
be done if this kind of thought were taken by all of 
us for the morrow. Be it so: but at least we might 
anticipate that the greatest and wisest of us, who were 
evidently the appointed teachers of the rest, would set 
themselves apart to seek out whatever could be surely 
known of the future destinies of their race; and to 
teach this in no rhetorical or ambiguous manner, but 
in the plainest and most severely earnest words. 

Now, the highest representatives of men who have 
thus endeavored, during the Christian era, to search out 
these deep things, and relate them, are Dante and 
Milton. There are none who for earnestness of 
thought, for mastery of word, can be classed with these. 
I am not at present, mind you, speaking of persons set 
apart in any priestly or pastoral office, to deliver creeds 
to us, or doctrines ; but of men who try to discover and 
set forth, as far as by human intellect is possible, the 
facts of the other world. Divines may perhaps teach 
us how to arrive there, but only these two poets have 
in any powerful manner striven to discover, or in any 
definite words professed to tell, what we shall see and 
become there ; or how those upper and nether worlds 
are, and have been, inhabited. 

And what have they told us? Milton's account of 
the most important event in his whole system of the 
universe, the fall of the angels, is evidently unbeliev- 



368 JOHN RUSKIN 

able to himself ; and the more so, that it is wholly 
founded on, and in a great part spoiled and degraded 
from, Hesiod's account of the decisive war of the 
younger gods with the Titans. The rest of his poem 
is a picturesque drama, in which every artifice of inven- 
tion is visibly and consciously employed; not a single 
fact being, for an instant, conceived as tenable by any 
living faith. Dante's conception is far more intense, 
and, by himself, for the time, not to be escaped from; 
it is indeed a vision, but a vision only, and that one of 
the wildest that ever entranced a soul — a dream in 
which every grotesque type or fantasy of heathen tra- 
dition is renewed, and adorned ; and the destinies of 
the Christian Church, under their most sacred symbols, 
become literally subordinate to the praise, and are only 
to be understood by the aid, of one dear Florentine 
maiden. 

I tell you truly that, as I strive more with this strange 
lethargy and trance in myself, and awake to the mean- 
ing and power of life, it seems daily more amazing to 
me that men such as these should dare to play with 
the most precious truths (or the most deadly untruths) 
by which the whole human race listening to them could 
be informed, or deceived ; — all the world their audi- 
ences forever, with pleased ear, and passionate heart; 
— and yet, to this submissive infinitude of souls, and 
evermore succeeding and succeeding multitude, hungry 
for bread of life, they do but play upon sweetly modu- 
lated pipes ; with pompous nomenclature adorn the 
councils of hell ; touch a troubadour's guitar to the 
courses of the suns ; and fill the openings of eternity, 
before which prophets have veiled their faces, and 
which angels desire to look into, with idle puppets of 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 369 

their scholastic imagination, and melancholy lights of 
frantic faith in their lost mortal love. 

Is not this a mystery of life? 

But more. We have to remember that these two 
great teachers were both of them warped in their tem- 
per, and thwarted in their search for truth. They were 
men of intellectual war, unable, through darkness of 
controversy, or stress of personal grief, to discern 
where their own ambition modified their utterances of 
the moral law ; or their own agony mingled with their 
anger at its violation. But greater men than these 
have been — innocent-hearted — too great for contest. 
Men, like Homer and Shakespeare, of so unrecognized 
personality, that it disappears in future ages, and be- 
comes ghostly, like the tradition of a lost heathen god. 
Men, therefore, to whose unoffended, uncondemning 
sight, the whole of human nature reveals itself in a 
pathetic weakness, with which they will not strive ; 
or in mournful and transitory strength, which they dare 
not praise. And all Pagan and Christian Civilization 
thus becomes subject to them. It does not matter how 
little, or how much, any of us have read, either of 
Homer or Shakespeare ; everything round us, in sub- 
stance or in thought, has been moulded by them. All 
Greek gentlemen were educated under Homer. All 
Roman gentlemen, by Greek literature. All Italian, 
and French, and English gentlemen, by Roman litera- 
ture, and by its principles. Of the scope of Shake- 
speare, I will say only, that the intellectual measure of 
every man since born, in the domains of creative 
thought, may be assigned to him, according to the 
degree in which he has been taught by Shakespeare. 
Well, what do these two men, centres of mortal intelli- 



370 JOHN RUSKIN 

gence, deliver to us of conviction respecting vi^hat it 
most behooves that intelHgence to grasp? What is 
their hope — their crown of rejoicing? what manner of 
exhortation have they for us, or of rebuke? what lies 
next their own hearts, and dictates their undying 
words? Have they any peace to promise to our unrest 

— any redemption to our misery? 

Take Homer first, and think if there is any sadder 
image of human fate than the great Homeric story. 
The main features in the character of Achilles are its 
intense desire of justice, and its tenderness of affection. 
And in that bitter song of the Iliad, this man, though 
aided continually by the wisest of the gods, and burning 
with the desire of justice in his heart, becomes yet, 
through ill-governed passion, the most unjust of men: 
and, full of the deepest tenderness in his heart, becomes 
yet, through ill-governed passion, the most cruel of 
men. Intense alike in love and in friendship, he loses, 
first his mistress, and then his friend ; for the sake of 
the one, he surrenders to death the armies of his own 
land ; for the sake of the other, he surrenders all. Will 
a man lay down his life for his friend? Yea — even 
for his dead friend, this Achilles, though goddess-born 
and goddess-taught, gives up his kingdom, his country, 
and his life — casts alike the innocent and guilty, with 
himself, into one gulf of slaughter, and dies at last by 
the hand of the basest of his adversaries. 

Is not this a mystery of life? 

But what, then, is the message to us of our own poet, 
and searcher of hearts, after fifteen hundred years of 
Christian faith have been numbered over the graves of 
men ? Are his words more cheerful than the Heathen's 

— is his hope more near — his trust more sure — his 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 371 

reading of fate more happy? Ah, no! He differs 
from the Heathen poet chiefly in this — that he recog- 
nizes, for deHverance, no gods nigh at hand ; and that, 
by petty chance — by momentary folly — by broken 
message — by fool's tyranny — or traitor's snare, the 
strongest and most righteous are brought to their ruin, 
and perish without word of hope. He indeed, as part 
of his rendering of character, ascribes the power and 
modesty of habitual devotion to the gentle and the 
just. The death-bed of Katharine is bright with visions 
of angels ; and the great soldier-king, standing by his 
few dead, acknowledges the presence of the Hand that 
can save alike by many or by few. But observe that 
from those who with deepest spirit, meditate, and with 
deepest passion, mourn, there are no such words as 
these ; nor in their hearts are any such consolations. 
Instead of the perpetual sense of the helpful presence 
of the Deity, which through all heathen tradition is the 
source of heroic strength, in battle, in exile, and in the 
valley of the shadow of death, we find only in the great 
Christian poet, the consciousness of a moral law, 
through which " the gods are just, and of our pleasant 
vices make instruments to scourge us " ; and of the re- 
solved arbitration of the destinies, that conclude into 
precision of doom what we feebly and blindly began ; 
and force us, when our indiscretion serves us, and our 
deepest plots do pall, to the confession that " there's 
a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how 
we will." 

Is not this a mystery of life? 

Be it so, then. About this human life that is to be, 
or that is, the wise religious men tell us nothing that 
we can trust ; and the wise contemplative men, nothing 



372 JOHN RUSKIN 

that can give us peace. But there is yet a third class, 
to whom we may turn — the wise practical men. We 
have sat at the feet of the poets who sang of heaven, 
and they have told us their dreams. We have listened 
to the poets who sang of earth, and they have chanted 
to us dirges and words of despair. But there is one 
class of men more : — men, not capable of vision, 
nor sensitive to sorrow, but firm of purpose — practised 
in business; learned in all that can be (by handling) 
known. Men, whose hearts and hopes are wholly in 
this present world, from whom, therefore, we may 
surely learn, at least, how, at present, conveniently to 
live in it. What will they say to us, or show us 
by example ? These kings — these councilors — these 
statesmen and builders of kingdoms — these capitalists 
and men of business, who weigh the earth, and the dust 
of it, in a balance. They know the world, surely ; and 
what is the mystery of life to us, is none to them. 
They can surely show us how to live, while we 
live, and to gather out of the present world what is 
best. 

I think I can best tell you their answer by telling you 
a dream I had once. For though I am no poet, I have 
dreams sometimes : — I dreamed I was at a child's 
May-day party, in which every means of entertainment 
had been provided for them by a wise and kind host. 
It was in a stately house, with beautiful gardens at- 
tached to it ; and the children had been set free in the 
rooms and gardens, with no care whatever but how 
to pass their afternoon rejoicingly. They did not, in- 
deed, know much about what was to happen next day ; 
and some of them, I thought, were a little frightened, 
because there was a chance of their being sent to a new 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 373 

school where there were examinations; but they kept 
the thoughts of that out of their heads as well as they 
could, and resolved to enjoy themselves. The house, 
I said, was in a beautiful garden, and in the garden 
were all kinds of flowers ; sweet, grassy banks for rest ; 
and smooth lawns for play ; and pleasant streams and 
woods ; and rocky places for climbing. And the chil- 
dren were happy for a little while, but presently they 
separated themselves into parties ; and then each party 
declared it would have a piece of the garden for its 
own, and that none of the others should have anything 
to do with that piece. Next, they quarrelled violently 
which pieces they would have ; and at last the boys 
took up the thing, as boys should do, " practically," 
and fought in the flower-beds till there was hardly a 
flower left standing; then they trampled down each 
other's bits of the garden out of spite; and the girls 
cried till they could cry no more ; and so they all lay 
down at last breathless in the ruin, and waited for 
the time when they were to be taken home in the 
evening.^ 

Meanwhile, the children in the house had been mak- 
ing themselves happy also in their manner. For them, 
there had been provided every kind of indoor pleasure : 
there was music for them to dance to ; and the library 
was open, with all manner of amusing books ; and there 
was a museum full of the most curious shells, and ani- 
mals, and birds ; and there was a workshop, with 
lathes and carpenter's tools, for the ingenious boys ; 
and there were pretty fantastic dresses, for the girls 

1 I have sometimes been asked what this means. I intended it to set 
forth the wisdom of men in war contending for kingdoms, and what 
follows to set forth their wisdom in peace, contending for wealth. 



374 JOHN RUSKIN 

to dress in ; and there were microscopes, and kaleido- 
scopes ; and whatever toys a child could fancy ; and a 
table, in the dining-room, loaded with everything nice 
to eat. 

But, in the midst of all this, it struck two or three 
of the more " practical " children, that they would like 
some of the brass-headed nails that studded the chairs ; 
and so they set to work to pull them out. Presently, 
the others, who were reading, or looking at shells, took 
a fancy to do the like ; and, in a little while, all the 
children, nearly, were spraining their fingers, in pulling 
out brass-headed nails. With all that they could pull 
out, they were not satisfied ; and then, everybody wanted 
some of somebody else's. And at last, the really prac- 
tical and sensible ones declared, that nothing was of 
any real consequence, that afternoon, except to get 
plenty of brass-headed nails; and that the books, and 
the cakes, and the microscopes were of no use at all 
in themselves, but only, if they could be exchanged 
for nail-heads. And at last they began to fight for 
nail-heads, as the others fought for the bits of garden. 
Only here and there, a despised one shrank away into 
a corner, and tried to get a little quiet with a book, 
in the midst of the noise; but all the practical ones 
thought of nothing else but counting nail-heads all the 
afternoon — even though they knew they would not be 
allowed to carry so much as one brass knob away with 
them. But no — it was — " Who has most nails ? I 
have a hundred, and you have fifty ; " or, " I have a 
thousand, and you have two. I must have as many as 
you before I leave the house, or I cannot possibly go 
home in peace." At last, they made so much noise 
that I awoke, and thought to myself, " What a false 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 375 

dream that is, of children!" The child is the father 
of the man ; and wiser. Children never do such foolish 
things. Only men do. 

But there is yet one last class of persons to be inter- 
rogated. The wise religious men we have asked in 
vain ; the wise contemplative men, in vain ; the wise 
worldly men, in vain. But there is another group yet. 
In the midst of this vanity of empty religion — of tragic 
contemplation — of wrathful and wretched ambition, 
and dispute for dust, there is yet one great group of 
persons, by whom all these disputers live — the persons 
who have determined, or have had it by a beneficent 
Providence determined for them, that they will do 
something useful ; that whatever may be prepared for 
them hereafter, or happen to them here, they will, at 
least, deserve the food that God gives them by winning 
it honorably : and that, however fallen from the purity, 
or far from the peace, of Eden, they will carry out the 
duty of human dominion, though they have lost its 
felicity ; and dress and keep the wilderness, though they 
no more can dress or keep the garden. 

These, — hewers of wood and drawers of water, — 
these, bent under burdens, or torn of scourges — these, 
that dig and weave — that plant and build ; workers in 
wood, and in marble, and in iron — by whom all food, 
clothing, habitation, furniture, and means of delight are 
produced, for themselves, and for all men beside ; men, 
whose deeds are good, though their words may be few ; 
men, whose lives are serviceable, be they never so short, 
and worthy of honor, be they never so humble ; — from 
these surely, at least, we may receive some clear mes- 
sage of teaching; and pierce, for an instant, into the 
mystery of life, and of its arts. 



376 JOHN RUSKIN 

Yes; from these, at last, we do receive a lesson. 
But I grieve to say, or rather — for that is the deeper 
truth of the matter — I rejoice to say — this message 
of theirs can only be received by joining them — not by 
thinking about them. 

You sent for me to talk to you of art; and I have 
obeyed you in coming. But the main thing I have to 
tell you is, — that art must not be talked about. The 
fact that there is talk about it at all, signifies that it 
is ill done, or cannot be done. No true painter ever 
speaks, or ever has spoken, much of his art. The 
greatest speak nothing. Even Reynolds is no excep- 
tion, for he wrote of all that he could not himself 
do, and was utterly silent respecting all that he 
himself did. 

The moment a man can really do his work he be- 
comes speechless about it. All words become idle to 
him — all theories. Does a bird need to theorize about 
building its nest, or boast of it when built? All good 
work is essentially done that way — without hesitation, 
without difficulty, without boasting; and in the doers 
of the best, there is an inner and involuntary power 
which approximates literally to the instinct of an 
animal — nay, I am certain that in the most perfect 
human artists, reason does not supersede instinct, but 
is added to an instinct as much more divine than that 
of the lower animals as the human body is more beau- 
tiful than theirs ; that a great singer sings not with less 
instinct than the nightingale, but with more — only 
more various, applicable, and governable ; that a great 
architect does not build with less instinct than the 
beaver or the bee, but with more — with an innate 
cunning of proportion that embraces all beauty, and a 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 377 

divine ingenuity of skill that, improvises all construc- 
tion. 

And now, returning to the broader question, what 
these arts and labors of life have to teach us of its 
mystery, this is the first of their lessons — that the 
more beautiful the art, the more it is essentially the 
work of people who feel themselves wrong; — who 
are striving for the fulfillment of a law, and the grasp 
of a loveliness, which they have not yet attained, which 
they feel even farther and farther from attaining the 
more they strive for it. And yet, in still deeper sense, 
it is the work of people who know also that they are 
right. The very sense of inevitable error from their 
purpose marks the perfectness of that purpose, and the 
continued sense of failure arises from the continued 
opening of the eyes more clearly to all the sacredest 
laws of truth. 

This is one lesson. The second is a very plain, and 
greatly precious one : namely — that whenever the arts 
and labors of life are fulfilled in this spirit of striving 
against misrule, and doing whatever we have to do, 
honorably and perfectly, they invariably bring happi- 
ness, as much as seems possible to the nature of man. 
In all other paths by which that happiness is pursued 
there is disappointment, or destruction : for ambition 
and for passion there is no rest — no fruition; the 
fairest pleasures of youth perish in a darkness greater 
than their past light: and the loftiest and purest love 
too often does but inflame the cloud of life with endless 
fire of pain. But, ascending from lowest to highest, 
through every scale of human industry, that industry 
worthily followed, gives peace. Ask the laborer in the 



378 JOHN RUSKIN 

field, at the forge, or in the mine; ask the patient, 
deHcate-fingered artisan, or the strong-armed, fiery- 
hearted worker in bronze, and in marble, and with 
the colors of light ; and none of these, who are true 
workmen, will ever tell you, that they have found the 
law of heaven an unkind one — that in the sweat of 
their face they should eat bread, till they return to the 
ground ; nor that they ever found it an unrewarded 
obedience, if, indeed, it was rendered faithfully to the 
command — " Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do — 
do it with thy might." 

These are the two great and constant lessons which 
our laborers teach us of the mystery of life. But there 
is another, and a sadder one, which they cannot teach 
us, which we must read on their tombstones. 

" Do it with thy might." There have been myriads 
upon myriads of human creatures who have obeyed this 
law — who have put every breath and nerve of their 
being into its toil — who have devoted every hour, and 
exhausted every faculty — who have bequeathed their 
unaccomplished thoughts at death — who, being dead, 
have yet spoken, by majesty of memory, and strength 
of example. And, at last, what has all this " Might " 
of humanity accomplished, in six thousand years of 
labor and sorrow ? What has it done? Take the three 
chief occupations and arts of men, one by one, and 
count their achievements. Begin with the first — the 
lord of them all — Agriculture. Six thousand years 
have passed since we were set to till the ground, from 
which we were taken. How much of it is tilled? 
How much of that which is, wisely or well? In the 
very centre and chief garden of Europe — where the 
two forms of parent Christianity have had their for- 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 379 

tresses — where the noble CathoHcs of the Forest Can- 
tons, and the noble Protestants of the Vaudois valleys, 
have maintained, for dateless ages, their faiths and lib- 
erties — there the unchecked Alpine rivers yet run wild 
in devastation ; and the marshes, which a few hundred 
men could redeem with a year's labor, still blast their 
helpless inhabitants into fevered idiotism. That is so, 
in the centre of Europe ! While, on the near coast of 
Africa, once the Garden of the Hesperides, an Arab 
woman, but a few sunsets since, ate her child, for fam- 
ine. And, with all the treasures of the East at our 
feet, we, in our own dominion, could not find a few 
grains of rice, for a people that asked of us no more ; 
but stood by, and saw five hundred thousand of them 
perish of hunger. 

Then after agriculture, the art of kings, take the 
next head of human arts — Weaving; the art of 
queens, honored of all noble Heathen women, in the 
person of their virgin goddess — honored of all He- 
brew women, by the word of their wisest king — " She 
layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the 
distaff ; she stretcheth out her hand to the poor. She 
is not afraid of the snow for her household, for all 
her household are clothed with scarlet. She maketh 
herself covering of tapestry; her clothing is silk and 
purple. She maketh fine linen, and selleth it, and 
delivereth girdles to the merchant." What have we 
done in all these thousands of years with this bright art 
of Greek maid and Christian matron? Six thousand 
years of weaving, and have we learned to weave? 
Might not every naked wall have been purple with 
tapestry, and every feeble breast fenced with sweet 
colors from the cold? What have we done? Our 



38o JOHN RUSKIN 

fingers are too few, it seems, to twist together some 
poor covering for our bodies. We set our streams to 
work for us, and choke the air with fire, to turn our 
spinning-wheels — and, — are we yet clothed? Are not 
the streets of the capitals of Europe foul with sale of 
cast clouts and rotten rags ? Is not the beauty of your 
sweet children left in wretchedness of disgrace, while, 
with better honor, nature clothes the brood of the bird 
in its nest, and the suckling of the wolf in her den? 
And does not every winter's snow robe what you have 
not robed, and shroud what you have not shrouded ; 
and every winter's wind bear up to heaven its wasted 
souls, to witness against you hereafter, by the voice t)f 
their Christ, — " I was naked, and ye clothed me 
not " ? 

Lastly — take the Art of Building — the strongest — 
proudest — most orderly — most enduring of the arts 
of man ; that of which the produce is in the surest 
manner accumulative, and need not perish, or be re- 
placed ; but if once well done, will stand more strongly 
than the unbalanced rocks — more prevalently than the 
crumbling hills. The art which is associated with all 
civic pride and sacred principle ; with which men record 
their power — satisfy their enthusiasm — make sure 
their defence — define and make dear their habitation. 
And in six thousand years of building, what have we 
done? Of the greater part of all that skill and 
strength, no vestige is left, but fallen stones, that en- 
cumber the fields and impede the streams. But, from 
this waste of disorder, and of time, and of rage, what 
is left to us? Constructive and progressive creatures 
that we are, with ruling brains, and forming hands, 
'capable of fellowship, and thirsting for fame, can we 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 381 

not contend, in comfort, with the insects of the forest, 
or, in achievement, with the worm of the sea? The 
white surf rages in vain against the ramparts built by 
poor atoms of scarcely nascent life; but only ridges of 
formless ruin mark the places where once dwelt our 
noblest multitudes. The ant and the moth have cells 
for each of their young, but our little ones He in fes- 
tering heaps, in homes that consume them like graves ; 
and night by night, from the corners of our streets, 
rises up the cry of the homeless — "I was a stranger, 
and ye took me not in." 

Must it be always thus? Is our life forever to 
be without profit — without possession? Shall the 
strength of its generations be as barren as death ; or 
cast away their labor, as the wild fig-tree casts her 
untimely figs? Is it all a dream then — the desire of 
the eyes and the pride of life — or, if it be, might we 
not live in nobler dream than this? The poets and 
prophets, the wise men, and the scribes, though they 
have told us nothing about a life to come, have told us 
much about the life that is now. They have had — 
they also, — their dreams, and we have laughed at them. 
They have dreamed of mercy, and of justice ; they have 
dreamed of peace and good-will ; they have dreamed of 
labor undisappointed, and of rest undisturbed ; they 
have dreamed of fulness in harvest, and overflowing 
in store ; they have dreamed of wisdom in council, and 
of providence in law ; of gladness of parents, and 
strength of children, and glory of grey hairs. And at 
these visions of theirs we have mocked, and held them 
for idle and vain, unreal and unaccomplishable. What 
have we accomplished with our realities? Is this what 
has come of our worldly wisdom, tried against their 



382 JOHN RUSKIN 

folly ? this, our mightiest possible, against their impotent 
ideal? or, have we only wandered among the spectra 
of a baser felicity, and chased phantoms of the tombs, 
instead of visions of the Almighty ; and walked after 
the imaginations of our evil hearts, instead of after the 
counsels of Eternity, until our lives — not in the like- 
ness of the cloud of heaven, but of the smoke of hell — 
have become " as a vapor, that appeareth for a little 
time, and then vanisheth away " ? 

Does it vanish, then ? Are you sure of that ? — sure, 
that the nothingness of the grave will be a rest from 
this troubled nothingness ; and that the coiling shadow, 
which disquiets itself in vain, cannot change into the 
smoke of the torment that ascends forever? Will any 
answer that they are sure of it, and that there is no 
fear, nor hope, nor desire, nor labor, whither they go? 
Be it so: will you not, then, make as sure of the Life 
that now is, as you are of the Death that is to come? 
Your hearts are wholly in this world — will you not 
give them to it wisely, as well as perfectly? And see, 
first of all, that you have hearts, and sound hearts, too, 
to give. Because you have no heaven to look for, is 
that any reason that you should remain ignorant of this 
wonderful and infinite earth, which is firmly and in- 
stantly given you in possession? Although your days 
are numbered, and the following darkness sure, is it 
necessary that you should share the degradation of the 
brute, because you are condemned to its mortality ; or 
live the life of the moth, and of the worm, because you 
are to companion them in the dust ? Not so ; we may 
have but a few thousands of days to spend, perhaps 
hundreds only — perhaps tens ; nay, the longest of our 
time and best, looked back on, will be but as a moment, 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 383 

as the twinkling of an eye ; still we are men, not in- 
sects ; we are living spirits, not passing clouds. " He 
maketh the winds His messengers ; the momentary fire, 
His minister;" and shall we do less than these? Let 
us do the work of men while we bear the form of them ; 
and, as we snatch our narrow portion of time out of 
Eternity, snatch also our narrow inheritance of passion 
out of Immortality — even though our lives be as a 
vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then van- 
isheth away. 

But there are some of you who believe not this — 
who think this cloud of Hfe has no such close — that 
it is to float, revealed and illumined, upon the floor 
of heaven, in the day when He cometh with clouds, 
and every eye shall see Him. Some day, you believe, 
within these five, or ten, or twenty years, for every 
one of us the judgment will be set, and the books 
opened. If that be true, far more than that must be 
true. Is there but one day of judgment? Why, for 
us every day is a day of judgment — every day is a 
Dies Irse, and writes its irrevocable verdict in the flame 
of its west. Think you that judgment waits till the 
doors of the grave are opened? It waits at the doors 
of your houses — it waits at the corners of your streets ; 
we are in the midst of judgment — the insects that 
we crush are our judges — the moments we fret away 
are our judges — the elements that feed us, judge, 
as they minister — and the pleasures that deceive us, 
judge, as they indulge. Let us, for our lives, do the 
work of Men while we bear the form of them, if indeed 
those lives are Not as a vapor, and do Not vanish 
away. 

" The work of men " — and what is that ? Well, 



384 JOHN RUSKIN 

we may any of us know very quickly, on the condition 
of being wholly ready to do it. But many of us are 
for the most part thinking, not of what we are to do, 
but of what we are to get ; and the best of us are sunk 
into the sin of Ananias, and it is a mortal one — we 
want to keep back part of the price ; and we continually 
talk of taking up our cross, as if the only harm in a 
cross was the zveight of it — as if it was only a thing 
to be carried, instead of to be — crucified upon. 
" They that are His have crucified the flesh, with the 
affections and lusts." Does that mean, think you, that 
in time of national distress, of religious trial, of crisis 
for every interest and hope of humanity — none of us 
will cease jesting, none cease idling, none put them- 
selves to any wholesome work, none take so much as 
a tag of lace off their footman's coats, to save the 
world? Or does it rather mean, that they are ready 
to leave houses, lands, and kindreds — yes, and life, if 
need be? Life! — some of us are ready enough to 
throw that away, joyless as we have made it. But 
" station in Life," — how many of us are ready to quit 
thatf Is it not always the great objection, where there 
is question of finding something useful to do — " We 
cannot leave our stations in Life " ? 

Those of us who really cannot — that is to say, who 
can only maintain themselves by continuing in some 
business or salaried office, have already something to 
do ; and all that they have to see to is, that they do it 
honestly and with all their might. But with most peo- 
ple who use that apology, " remaining in the station of 
life to which Providence has called them " means keep- 
ing all the carriages, and all the footmen and large 
houses they can possibly pay for; and, once for all, I 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 385 

say that if ever Providence did put them into stations 
of that sort — which is not at all a matter of certainty 
— Providence is just now very distinctly calling them 
out again. Levi's station in life was the receipt of 
custom; and Peter's, the shore of Galilee; and Paul's, 
the antechambers of the High Priest, — which " sta- 
tion in life " each had to leave, with brief notice. 

And whatever our station in life may be, at this 
crisis, those of us who mean to fulfil our duty ought 
first, to live on as little as we can ; and, secondly, to 
do all the wholesome work for it we can, and to spend 
all we can spare in doing all the sure good we can. 

And sure good is, first in feeding people, then in 
dressing people, then in lodging people, and lastly in 
rightly pleasing people, with arts, or sciences, or any 
other subject of thought. 

I say first in feeding; and, once for all, do not let 
yourselves be deceived by any of the common talk of 
" indiscriminate charity." The order to us is not to 
feed the deserving hungry, nor the industrious hungry, 
nor the amiable and well-intentioned hungry, but simply 
to feed the hungry. It is quite true, infallibly true, 
that if any man will not work, neither should he eat — 
think of that, and every time you sit down to your 
dinner, ladies and gentlemen, say solemnly, before you 
ask a blessing, " How much work have I done to-day 
for my dinner? " But the proper way to enforce that 
order on those below you, as well as on yourselves, is 
not to leave vagabonds and honest people to starve 
together, but very distinctly to discern and seize your 
vagabond ; and shut your vagabond up out of honest 
people's way, and very sternly then see that, until he 
has worked, he does not eat. But the first thing is to 



386 JOHN RUSKIN 

be sure you have the food to give; and, therefore, to 
enforce the organization of vast activities in agricul- 
ture and in commerce, for the production of the w^hole- 
somest food, and proper storing and distribution of it, 
so that no famine shall any more be possible among 
civilized beings. There is plenty of work in this busi- 
ness alone, and at once, for any number of people who 
like to engage in it. 

Secondly, dressing people — that is to say, urging 
every one within reach of your influence to be always 
neat and clean, and giving them means of being so. In 
so far as they absolutely refuse, you must give up the 
effort with respect to them, only taking care that no 
children within your sphere of influence shall any more 
be brought up with such habits ; and that every person 
who is willing to dress with propriety shall have en- 
couragement to do so. And the first absolutely neces- 
sary step towards this is the gradual adoption of a con- 
sistent dress for different ranks of persons, so that 
their rank shall be known by their dress ; and the re- 
striction of the changes of fashion within certain limits. 
All which appears for the present quite impossible ; 
but it is only so far even difficult as it is difficult 
to conquer our vanity, frivolity, and desire to appear 
what we are not. And it is not, nor ever shall be, 
creed of mine, that these mean and shallow vices are 
unconquerable by Christian women. 

And then, thirdly, lodging people, which you may 
think should have been put first, but I put it third, 
because we must feed and clothe people where we find 
them, and lodge them afterwards. And providing 
lodgment for them means a great deal of vigorous 
legislature, and cutting down of vested interests that 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 387 

stand in the way, and after that, or before that, so far 
as we can get it, thorough sanitary and remedial action 
in the houses that we have; and then the building of 
more, strongly, beautifully, and in groups of limited 
extent, kept in proportion to their streams, and walled 
round, so that there may be no festering and wretched 
suburb anywhere, but clean and busy street within, and 
the open country without, with a belt of beautiful gar- 
den and orchard round the walls, so that from any part 
of the city perfectly fresh air and grass, and sight of 
far horizon, might be reachable in a few minutes' walk. 
This the final aim; but in immediate action every 
minor and possible good to be instantly done, when, 
and as, we can ; roofs mended that have holes in them 
— fences patched that have gaps in them — walls but- 
tressed that totter — and floors propped that shake ; 
cleanliness and order enforced with our own hands 
and eyes, till we are breathless, every day. And all 
the fine arts will healthily follow. I myself have 
washed a flight of stone stairs all down, with bucket and 
broom, in a Savoy inn, where they hadn't washed their 
stairs since they first went up them ; and I never made 
a better sketch than that afternoon. 

These, then, are the three first needs of civilized life ; 
and the law for every Christian man and woman is, 
that they shall be in direct service towards one of these 
three needs, as far as is consistent with their own spe- 
cial occupation, and if they have no special business, 
then wholly in one of these services. And out of such 
exertion in plain duty all other good will come ; for in 
this direct contention with material evil, you will find 
out the real nature of all evil ; you will discern by the 
various kinds of resistance, what is really the fault and 



388 JOHN RUSKIN 

main antagonism to good ; also you will find the most 
unexpected helps and profound lessons given, and 
truths will come thus down to us which the speculation 
of all our lives would never have raised us up to. You 
will find nearly every educational problem solved, as 
soon as you truly want to do something ; everybody will 
become of use in their own fittest way, and will learn 
what is best for them to know in that use. Competi- 
tive examination will then, and not till then, be whole- 
some, because it will be daily, and calm, and in practice ; 
and on these familiar arts, and minute, but certain and 
serviceable knowledges, will be surely edified and 
sustained the greater arts and splendid theoretical 
sciences. 

But much more than this. On such holy and simple 
practice will be founded, indeed, at last, an infallible 
religion. The greatest of all the mysteries of life, 
and the most terrible, is the corruption of even the 
sincerest religion, which is not daily founded on ra- 
tional, effective, humble, and helpful action. Helpful 
action, observe ! for there is just one law, which, 
obeyed, keeps all religions pure — forgotten, makes 
them all false. Whenever in any religious faith, dark 
or bright, we allow our minds to dwell upon the points 
in which we differ from other people, we are wrong, 
and in the devil's power. That is the essence of the 
Pharisee's thanksgiving — " Lord, I thank Thee that I 
am not as other men are." At every moment of our 
lives we should be trying to find out, not in what we 
differ from other people, but in what we agree with 
them ; and the moment we find we can agree as to any- 
thing that should be done, kind or good, (and who but 
fools couldn't?) then do it; push at it together: you 



THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 389 

can't quarrel in a side-by-side push; but the moment 
that even the best men stop pushing, and begin talking, 
they mistake their pugnacity for piety, and it's all over. 
I will not speak of the crimes which in past times have 
been committed in the name of Christ, nor of the follies 
which are at this hour held to be consistent with obedi- 
ence to Him ; but I will speak of the morbid corruption 
and waste of Vital power in religious sentiment, by 
which the pure strength of that which should be the 
guiding soul of every nation, the splendor of its youth- 
ful manhood, and spotless light of its maidenhood, is 
averted or cast away. You may see continually girls 
who have never been taught to do a single useful thing 
thoroughly; who cannot sew, who cannot cook, who 
cannot cast an account, nor prepare a medicine, whose 
whole life has been passed either in play or in pride; 
you will find girls like these, when they are earnest- 
hearted, cast all their innate passion of religious spirit, 
which was meant by God to support them through the 
irksomeness of daily toil, into grievous and vain medi- 
tation over the meaning of the great Book, of which 
no syllable was ever yet to be understood but through 
a deed; all the instinctive wisdom and mercy of their 
womanhood made vain, and the glory of their pure con- 
sciences warped into fruitless agony concerning ques- 
tions which the laws of common serviceable life would 
have either solved for them in an instant, or kept out 
of their way. Give such a girl any true work that 
will make her active in the dawn, and weary at night, 
with the consciousness that her fellow-creatures have 
indeed been the better for her day, and the powerless 
sorrow of her enthusiasm will transform itself into a 
majesty of radiant and beneficent peace. 



390 JOHN RUSKIN 

So with our youths. We once taught them to make 
Latin verses, and called them educated ; now we teach 
them to leap and to row, to hit a ball with a bat, and 
call them educated. Can they plough, can they sow, 
can they plant at the right time, or build with a steady 
hand? Is it the effort of their lives to be chaste, 
knightly, faithful, holy in thought, lovely in word and 
deed? Indeed it is, with some, nay, with many, and 
the strength of England is in them, and the hope ; but 
we have to turn their courage from the toil of war to 
the toil of mercy ; and their intellect from dispute of 
words to discernment of things; and their knighthood 
from the errantry of adventure to the state and fidelity 
of a kingly power. And then, indeed, shall abide, for 
them and for us, an incorruptible felicity, and an in- 
fallible religion; shall abide for us Faith, no more to 
be assailed by temptation, no more to be defended by 
wrath and by fear ; — shall abide with us Hope, no 
more to be quenched by the years that overwhelm, or 
made ashamed by the shadows that betray : — shall 
abide for us, and with us, the greatest of these ; the 
abiding will, the abiding name of our Father. For 
the greatest of these is Charity. 



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